


Histories and Annals

by aradian_nights



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Siblings, Gen, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-10 12:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aradian_nights/pseuds/aradian_nights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin is given the orders to attempt to decipher an old journal that could shed light onto an unknown past, his missing parents, and an enigmatic connection to Historia Reiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pater

**Author's Note:**

> I have been consistently obsessed with finding ways to make Armin and Historia accept their undeniable potential of being siblings in any way, shape, or form. So when Chapter 53 came out, I kind of leapt at the chance to make it possible for them to actually be related. So I made up a scenario in which they could be siblings in canon. The fic takes place between Chapter 52 and 53, though as of right now I'd say it'll probably bleed right into 53. It's an alternate universe because, of course, Armin and Historia are most likely NOT siblings. But, one can dream.

_**Histories and Annals** _

_Pater_

The break in had been in the middle of the night. Armin had not seen any of it, because his father had ushered into a small cupboard, pressing his finger to his lips. Armin had mimicked him confusedly, his tiny, plump fingers resting against his mouth. He'd hugged his knees to his chest, his back pressed up against wood, and he'd listened. There had been sounds, scary sounds, strangled shouts and grunts from outside, from another room, but they were so  _loud_ …

Armin had begun to shake. By the time his father returned to the cupboard, there had been tears in Armin's eyes. The man looked at Armin with sympathy and sadness, and his eyes darted away, flashing in the darkness of the kitchen. Then he looked back to Armin, and smiled brightly.

"Come here," his father whispered gently, offering out his arms. Armin flung himself at his father, burying his face in the man's bony shoulder. He began to sob uncontrollably as his father rubbed his scrawny back, his palm running smooth circles around Armin's nightshirt. "Shh, shh… It's okay now."

"Papa," Armin sobbed into the man's shoulder. "Papa…"

"Hey," his father whispered, tilting Armin's tiny head up with the knuckle of his forefinger. Tears glistened against the toddler's face, snot collecting in his nostrils as he hiccupped weakly. His father kissed his hair, and hugged him tightly. "Do you want to go see Grandpa, Armin?"

The tears stopped immediately. Like any child, he was distracted by a tantalizing idea. He wanted it. He wanted it badly. He wanted the books and the stories, and he wanted the smell of tobacco and the hats in the attic, and the harmonica and the pipe. He wanted his grandfather's voice to pacify the bad things, the nightmares, the intruder in the dark.

He nodded eagerly. His father wasted no time, and he scooped Armin up, rushing him from the kitchen. They were outside suddenly, and Armin had no time to even glance about the hall, though he was sure there was a shadowy figure curled upon the floor. He stared vacantly, unsure if the figure had been anything but a lumpy shadow.

It was a blur after that, but somehow they had ended up at Armin's grandfather's home. There were crickets echoing against the humid night, and against Armin's cheek, his father's chest rose and fell heavily. The air smelled sour, of sweat and petrichor and pipe tobacco. Armin blinked rapidly, tiredly, and he smiled big at the sight of his grandfather. The man was in his pajamas, looking rather stunned and confused at the sight of his son and grandson.

"Grampa!" Armin cried enthusiastically. His voice was no longer thick with tears, but now with exhaustion. His father set him down, and he ran on stubby legs, throwing his arms around his grandfather's legs. The older man buckled in surprise. He patted Armin's head, and pulled him up into his arms.

"Wait!" the man cried out, his voice wavering in alarm.

Armin twisted in his grandfather's arms. He caught sight of his father, the first time he was truly seeing him all night. His face was pale, and his hair was almost dark around his face. His rumpled shirt was splattered with flecks of red, which sprinkled the pale fabric like crimson freckles. Armin stared, and he wrapped his arms tightly around his grandfather's neck. He was half turned toward the door, but he had frozen with his hand extended.

"Papa…?" Armin yawned, rubbing his eyes. "Papa, where are you going…?"

His father's face crumpled. He put on a big smile, and whirled around to face Armin. "I'm just going back home to get a few things. I'll be back before you know it."

"You don't—" his grandfather started, his voice soft.

"Dad," Armin's father said steadily. He was still smiling. "I'll be right back. Give me an hour, and then you can yell at me all you want."

"I don't want to  _yell_  at you," his grandfather croaked. "I want to know what the hell is going on."

"Papa," Armin said. "I don't think home is any good right now."

"Ah," his father said, his smile tight. "You've woken up, haven't you?"

"Papa, I was awake the whole time," Armin mumbled, his face flushing.

"Never mind that," his father said, running his fingers through his hair. "Just… don't worry." He pressed his hand to the doorknob, and nodded. Armin's grandfather stared at his son with terror clear in his eyes. "Everything is fine."

"I expect so," his grandfather said quietly, cupping the back of Armin's head and cradling it gently.

"Be good, Armin," his father said, opening the door and backing away. Armin watched his father melt into the blanket of night with a small smile and empty words. "Go to sleep, okay?"

Armin nodded, and he rested his head against his grandfather's shoulder, staring confusedly into the massive abyss as it swallowed his father whole, and refused to regurgitate him. Armin was tucked into bed, and kissed on the forehead, and given a bedtime story. He was given the promises of when he awoke, when his father would return, when he could go home.

They were empty promises. His father would never return.

And perhaps he had known that all along.

* * *

Armin walked quietly through the hall. Jean and Sasha were outside, and Mikasa, Eren, Historia, and Connie were in the kitchen. Armin had ducked out on his chores with a stroke of luck. No one seemed to need him, and that was fine by him. He had some things he wanted to discuss with Hange anyway.

His mind was abuzz with theories, but he had no one to bounce them off. Except Hange. So maybe he was thirsting for a little intellectual banter. No one could really blame him for that, could they? He stopped before the room he knew Hange had locked their self in, and he stood there pensively. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe they were busy. It wasn't like he had anything particularly  _important_  to say.

Armin sighed, and forced himself to knock on the door. In reply, there was a long groan of acknowledgement. Armin didn't know how to take that. Was that an okay to come in? Or a command to go away? Or maybe it was an inquisition of who was at the door. Maybe…!

"Squad Leader Hange?" Armin called, leaning his head close to the door. "It's Armin."

The sound of a chair skidding back, footsteps falling heavily behind the door, sent him stumbling back. The door was flung open, and Armin glanced around the hall nervously as Hange appeared in the doorway, an eager grin on their long face. Armin wasn't quite sure how to interpret that either.

"Armin," Hange said, reaching out and snatching him by the front of his shirt. "Perfect! I need your help."

He squeaked as he was yanked into the room, the door slamming shut behind him, and he blinked rapidly as Hange pulled him to a desk sitting in the corner, a dimming lantern illuminating the crumpled parchment strewn across the surface of the wood. A worn, stained black book sat atop it all like the peak of a mountain, the focal point of an incredible mess.

"What is that?" Armin asked. Hange pulled him closer, and snatched the little book from the desk.

"This?" Hange held it up. It looked rather thin and decrepit. Years of wear had done its work on the binding, which appeared to be falling apart, and the leather cover was peeling away, stained and cracked and faded. The pages looked yellowed and crinkled, which proved the little book's age was certainly older than Armin, at the very least. "It's something Levi picked off a Wall Cultist— or at least, that's what he said when he gave it to me. Now I'm not really sure."

"A Wall Cultist?" Armin took a step forward, and peered at Hange's notes. They were all scribbles and drawings, things he could barely understand. They were Hange's notes, written so she could understand them. That meant little to him at first glance. "So you think that notebook could help us?"

"Well, whoever wrote this thing definitely didn't want anyone else to read it," Hange said, jerking the book into Armin's face. He took it carefully as they ran her fingers through their hair, and collapsed at their desk, their eyes darting across their notes. "The code the guy used isn't like anything I've ever seen before. He wrote shit like a children's picture book, and I can't crack it."

Armin stared at Hange, and then he looked down at the little book.  _And Hange thinks I'll be able to help?_  he thought in awe. "Okay," he said, carefully opening the notebook. "Did Levi say when he got this? It looks like it's about to fall apart."

Hange laughed, and rested their cheek against their fist. "You think Levi told me anything past the fact he stole it from a guy who had a wall fixation?"

"Okay," Armin said with a weak smile. "Point taken. Did you crack anything in here? Even a little hint could unravel the entire thing."

"Well," Hange said, flipping through their papers as Armin began to thumb through the journal. It was handwritten, and the pictures were penned in ink. They were lovely pictures. Familiar pictures. He blinked, and squinted intricate drawing of the ocean that stretched across one page. "He repeats pictures a lot. I think the pictures might be people, because he talks about the ocean in repetition with black snow and, uh… inverted ice mountain things."

Armin found the pictures of snow after Hange spoke about it. He leaned back against a wall, flicking through pages and beginning to read along with the text. "We should probably figure out what represents the narrator first," Armin said. There was something bothering him about the picture of the ocean. It was  _too_  familiar. He bit his lip, and looked up at Hange.

"That would be easier if we knew anything about him," Hange said quietly, folding their hands over their mouth.

"You know," Armin said, "for a Wall Cultist… the person who wrote this seems really interested in the outside world."

Hange looked up at him sharply. "Wait, what do you mean?" Hange bent forward eagerly. "Do you think that maybe he's not a Wall Cultist after all?"

"I think that he's more of a heretic, actually," Armin said, his eyes glued to the page he'd stopped on. His thumb brushed the words, and he couldn't help but laugh.

"What?" Hange jumped to their feet, and grabbed him by the shoulders. "What is it? Did you figure something out?"

"No," Armin said, looking at them with wide eyes. "It's just… this notebook uses terms from my book on the outside world."

Hange stared at him, and they looked utterly fascinated, their mouth dropping open. "Are you serious?" they gasped, shaking his shoulders. He gave a shout of surprise, nearly dropping the notebook. "Go get it!"

"I-I don't have it anymore!" Armin gasped, wincing as she ceased shaking him. "I lost it when Wall Maria was taken."

Hange let go of him, slipping back to their chair. Disappointment was clear in their eyes. "Oh," Hange said. "That's… unfortunate."

"But…" Armin licked his lips, and he lurched forward, grabbing a pencil and a spare bit of paper. "I remember most of it. I don't think I could rewrite it, or anything like that, but if I write down the chapter titles—" Armin numbered the paper from one to twenty six. Beside the numbers, he wrote the chapter titles. He stared at them for a moment, and then looked up at Hange. "What do you think?"

Hange studied the chapter titles for a moment, lamplight glinting off their glasses as they pulled the paper closer, and they looked back at the little journal. Armin stared at Hange with large eyes as they chuckled, their lips pulling taut into a grin.

"I think," Hange said with a soft, excited voice, "that we can crack this."

* * *

" _I met a woman today with eyes like the ocean_ ," Armin read aloud. The first sentence they had managed to decode.

"Sounds like the beginning of a shitty romance novel," Levi said. He was standing near the door, arriving at their request because of their recent discoveries. Hange and Armin had been working for about three days. In that time they had uncovered exactly how to decipher the coded journal through Armin's hazy memories and their combined intellect.

"Not far off," Hange said. "Unfortunately, your not quite Wall Cultist doesn't refer to himself by name. He does, however, mention a certain noble family."

Levi glanced between them impatiently, his arms folded across his chest. It had been a long day, and Armin understood that the man was tired, but he  _had_  been the one who had requested the journal's translation. Hange and Armin were just glad to oblige in the task.

"Reiss," Levi said blankly. "So what the fuck is his connection to them?"

"Yeah, that confused us at first," Armin said. He scooped up the journal they had chosen to use to detail the translation, and he offered it to Levi. The man watched him suspiciously, but took the journal, and glanced to where Armin was pointing. "See, at first all he talked about was this woman— that was my fault, because I wasn't deciphering it in order. But here he talked about meeting with Reiss to pursue a job offer. That's where the narrative begins."

Levi was silent as he read along the page, his dark blue eyes flickering. They then narrowed for a moment, his brow furrowing. It seemed as though he was confused, and he spoke quietly, "No, that's not right…"

"What?" Hange asked eagerly, moving closer to Levi. He glared in response.

Levi sighed, and he clapped the book shut. "He definitely didn't work for Reiss," he said. He tossed the journal onto the desk carelessly, whirling to face them. "If there's nothing actually in this shitty journal, tell me now. I don't need you two wasting your time on something that clearly can't help us."

"Captain Levi," Armin said quickly, feeling a little desperate at Levi's sudden turnabout. Levi looked at Armin impatiently. "This journal was heavily layered all sorts of coding. There is clearly something in here that this man didn't want anyone else to see!"

"Yeah!" Hange cried. "It took us days just to crack through the surface of it all. There is so much we're missing here!"

Levi glanced between them, and he shook his head. "Whatever," he said with a frown. "What else did you learn?"

Hange and Armin glanced at each other. In their three days of buckling down and decoding, the two of them had become increasingly involved in their project. Armin was determined to get the entire story straight, and Hange was determined to find some sort of link between the writer and Titans.

"Well," Armin said, reaching for the journal. "This guy met a woman at the Reiss house." Armin opened up their decoded copy of the journal, and scanned it quickly. "He thought she looked sick, so he… helped her, I guess?" Armin bit his lip, and handed the book to Hange. "It was a little unclear. We're still trying to work that bit out."

"But!" Hange waved the journal excitedly. "He ended up totally blowing off Reiss to help the woman. That part  _was_  clear."

Levi seemed to consider this for a few moments, before nodding. "Okay," he said. "So who was the woman, then?"

"Well," Hange gasped, eyes flying wide, "don't you think that's what we're trying to find out?"

"Captain, if you told us when you got a hold of the journal…" Armin said cautiously. He was feeling awfully brave, but also incredibly curious. He needed to know what this man had found out. What was so important that someone had to code it so meticulously? "I mean, we'd definitely have a better understanding of what we're looking for."

Levi stood silently, looking a little awkward as his eyes traveled from journal to journal, avoiding looking at Hange and Armin directly. "Honestly," Levi said, "I have no fucking clue. Over a decade ago."

"A decade?" Armin asked. Levi glared at him, and he flushed, quickly trying to recollect himself. "I just mean, um, that you weren't part of the Survey Corps then. So why hold onto this?"

"I was morbidly curious," Levi said in an absolute deadpan. "I knew the fucker had secrets. I wanted them."

Armin looked at Hange, wondering if they had picked up on what Levi was insinuating as well. And oh boy, did they. Hange had strode forward fast, their eyebrows shooting upwards as they pointed an accusatory finger at Levi's impassive face.

"Aha!" Hange cried. "You did know him!"

"Not really," Levi said, his eyes narrowing at the pointed finger. "No."

"But you did know him a little bit, didn't you?" Armin asked desperately. Levi glanced at Armin with an expression that made it clear that both of them were treading on thin ice. The man looked ready to punch through a wall, his brow growing heavy as he glared. "I… I just mean, you talk about him like he was more than just some stranger you pick-pocketed."

Levi closed his eyes, and he pinched the bridge of his nose as he exhaled sharply through his teeth. "I don't see," he muttered, "why the fuck that'd be important."

"Is that a confession?" Hange asked eagerly.

The man stared at Hange, and pivoted sharply, moving toward the door. Hange made a sharp noise of objection, reaching after him in distress. Armin glanced at Hange, and then looked down at the journal. Something struck him as he held in carefully, his mind trying to unravel what little he knew of this mysterious narrator. Over a decade ago…

"Wait," Armin said sharply. He didn't look up from the journal, but he heard Levi's and Hange's boots stop scuffling against the floor. "What if…"

He didn't know how to say it. There was no ground to base it on, really, he was just spouting theories but… it could be true. There was nothing to say that it wasn't. And over a decade ago, surely…

"Spit it out," Levi snapped.

"Oh," Armin gasped, looking up at the man, startled. "Right! I was just thinking, it could be possible that the woman the writer had met was… um… Historia's mother? If… if the timing matches up…" He saw the look Hange gave him, and he flushed bright red. "B-but, that's just a theory, and a ridiculous one, I mean the probability in itself…"

"Sixteen years ago," Hange said slowly, staring at Armin with large eyes. "You know, I don't think that's ridiculous at all. If the timing fits, I'll back that theory a hundred percent." Hange rounded on Levi, who was standing in the doorway, frowning at them both. "Does the timing fit?"

Levi shrugged. "I told you," he said, rolling his eyes. "I don't—" He stopped himself. His expression did not change, but he did clamp his mouth shut rather tightly, as though something had came to mind to shut him up.

"Is that a yes?" Hange asked, giving a tiny grin.

Levi gave them both sharp, dangerous looks, and he raised his chin at them. "Listen up," he said impatiently. "When I stole that book, I was living in a pisshole. The years blurred together after awhile. I can't say for sure when I took it. It could have been sixteen years ago." He shrugged, and turned away again. "Hell, it might've been."

He left, shutting the door behind him, and leaving Armin feeling incredibly unfulfilled. Now what? Levi clearly wasn't up for talking about the past. That wasn't surprising in the least, but Armin still couldn't help the loss that swept over him. How were they supposed to unearth this man's writings if Levi, who had  _been_  there, refused to tell them anything about it? It was absolutely nerve-wracking, and Armin found himself sitting down to get a better grasp on their situation.

"So," Hange chirped. Armin glanced up, and wondered if perhaps they really  _were_  wasting their time. "Let's say, hypothetically, it  _is_  Historia's mother…"

"That could cause a lot of complications for our narrator," Armin said thoughtfully, thumbing idly through the thin yellow pages of the original journal.

"Blowing off a job interview for the boss's mistress?" Hange laughed, and then they cupped their chin, staring off into the reflection of light bouncing off the window glass. "It's a shame. If he did get that job, he'd be a lot more important to us."

"If he was just a little clearer…" Armin said quietly. He bit the skin of his thumb, his eyes trailing over the intricately coded words.  _The ocean_ , Armin thought. He felt that he could truly understand where the man who had written the journal had been coming from. He felt that the detailed coding was simple, once the pattern unraveled. It wasn't difficult to read into what the man had been thinking as he'd penned his story in cipher. The outside world was just a dream to the man. A dream that fueled his reality, that fed his thoughts and drove him forward.  _The ocean_ , Armin realized.  _That's the woman at the Reiss home_. "He mentions the ocean a lot."

"Yes, he does," Hange agreed. Hange was behind Armin, but coming closer slowly. Their eyes were glinting in the dimming lamplight. They could tell he was grasping onto something, and the two of them had a moment of acute unspoken understanding. "Do you think it means something beyond what we first translated?"

"I think…" Armin bit his lip, and flipped the journal open to a page that held the drawing of the ocean, the one that appeared like a copy of the one that had been in his old book. "We've been looking at the mentions of the outside world as just part of the code, but what if they mean more? What if the ocean refers to more than just the woman's eyes?"

Hange listened to him calmly. "What else does it refer to?" Hange asked. Their excited brown eyes widened, and they leaned over the desk to peer at the drawing as well. "If you're right, then we might have misinterpreted it."

"No, I don't think we did," Armin said quickly. "I think he did compare her eyes to the ocean, but that's… not all. I think that maybe the man… thought her entire  _existence_ like the ocean."

Hange pulled back, assessing the desk as though to remove their self from the situation and observe the story in its entirety. They adjusted their glasses, and nodded slowly. "Okay," Hange said. "Tell me where you're going with that."

Armin took a deep breath, and he pointed to the drawing of the ocean, tapping it twice with his forefinger. "The ocean is a  _constant_  with this man," Armin said, feeling the words spew from his mouth. He could not contain them, and he could barely understand them, but somehow this felt correct. "All the other symbols— and, yeah, I'm going to call them symbols, because that's what they are— they only pop up a few times, but the ocean just keeps coming back. I think the ocean is a symbol for the woman."

Hange cupped their chin thoughtfully. Their eyes were shielded by the glint of their glasses. "What kind of symbol?" Hange asked. "How is the ocean symbolic of a woman?"

Armin smiled up at Hange, feeling a little sheepish. "Well…" he said, his voice trailing off as he tried to find the words to correctly describe what he was feeling over this old journal. "I think that he studied the same book I did, but… extensively. Like, I was just a child reading it, almost like it was a fairy tale. This man, though?" Armin shook his head fiercely. "No, he read the book knowing how foolish it is to wish for the outside world. But he wanted it anyway. I think, maybe, that's why he was looking into the Walls? To find out more about the outside world." Armin tapped the drawing again twice, his fingers brushing the rough texture of the paper. He could trace the pattern of waves inked against the yellow page by heart. "The  _ocean_ , Hange. It's everything he could ever want, and everything he can never have. It's the outside world, the temptation and the danger, and it's this woman."

Hange was silent as she stood, listening attentively to Armin's hypothesis. When he finished speaking, he felt silly and uncertain, his cheeks flushing from embarrassment. He didn't know where it came from, but he was almost certain that this was correct. He could feel it, as though the man who had written the journal had written is  _specifically_  for Armin's intellect to decipher. There was no explanation for the feeling, nor was there any ground for it. It was an inexplicable belief that thrived within him. There was no explaining it. It was pure faith.

"You talk about it," Hange said slowly, "as though you know how the man felt."

Armin shifted in his seat awkwardly. "Well, I guess I kind of do," he sighed, glancing away from the squad leader. "I mean, not with the woman. I've never had any kind of experience like that, not really, but I do know what it's like to want to see the outside world." He smiled dimly, and closed the old journal, running his fingers across the faded leather. "The ocean, and the seas of fire, and the mountains that spout burning snow. It's always been my dream to see that world." Armin raised his eyes to Hange again, and this time his smile was large and excited. "It's a child's dream, yes, but this man clearly understood that dream, to the point where  _everything_  in his world reflected upon it." Armin grinned broadly, feeling a little giddy at the revelation. "And that's amazing!"

Hange grinned just as broadly, their expression reflecting his own. "That  _is_  amazing!" Hange exclaimed, clapping him on the shoulder. "But I don't think we have any proof that this guy had anything to do with the woman beyond helping her at the Reiss house."

"No," Armin said vacantly, rubbing his head. "Not yet."

"So," Hange said, "let's find some."

Armin couldn't help but grin, and nod eagerly. It was becoming abundantly clear that whatever this man's secret was, they were hell-bent on uncovering it. And they would. How could they not?

* * *

Nearly a week into their quest to decode the old journal, and a few things had light shed upon them. For one thing, Levi had left out a significant amount his involvement in the man's personal life. Hange had been deciphering alone while Armin had fallen asleep in the chair in the corner of the room, beside the window. Armin had awoken to arguing.

"Why the fuck would I have told you that?" Levi's voice was icy as it drifted through the thick cloud that hovered over Armin's lucidity. It broke through the barriers of Armin's mind, forcing him into attention.

"You didn't think that  _maybe_  that'd be important?" Hange cried with a voice that was sharp and clear, exasperated and disbelieving. "You knew him, and not just as an acquaintance, I mean you were his  _friend_  and you didn't tell us!"

Levi gave a soft scoff. "Don't blow it up to be anything it wasn't. I was a criminal, and he wanted shit he couldn't get on the market."

"Wait," Hange said quickly, sounding stunned. "Did you sell him drugs?"

Levi was quiet. The silence was heavy, and Armin cracked open an eye. Through the bleary light, he saw Levi standing near the door, his face turned up toward Hange's. His eyes were narrowed and daunting.

"I sold him  _books_ , four eyes," Levi said sharply, a bite in his tone.

"Oh," Hange said. "You could have said that!"

"I didn't think I had to make the distinction." Levi sighed, and he pinched the bridge of his nose irritably. "Why does this even matter? I don't believe he would have bothered to bring me up in that damned notebook."

"He did, though," Hange gasped, whirling around, and Armin sat up curiously. He was still a little delirious, but he thought he might understand what was going on. "At first I didn't think it was you— he kept referring to you as the kid, the boy, and the like— but then he called you by your name!" Hange jerked their journal used for deciphering under Levi's nose. "Look! He asked you if you wanted to learn how to read!"

The book when flying across the room, and Armin jumped to his feet, his eyes following it as it smacked against the window, and fell pages first to the wooden floor. Hange glanced at it, and gave a low whistle as Levi whirled around and marched to the door.

"Okay," Hange called as he yanked open the door. "Touchy subject?"

He slammed the door behind him, and Hange's lips pursed indignantly. They glanced at Armin, and gave a heavy shrug. "Guess so."

"What happened?" Armin asked, carefully moving to scoop up the journal. He smoothed out the bent pages, frowning a little at the damage done.

"Levi is a child," Hange said, tucking their hair behind their ear as they wandered back to the desk. "I guess I struck a nerve, or something."

"Yeah," Armin said nervously. "Yeah, he was definitely angry…"

"I think he should have said something," Hange said. "I mean, that's important, isn't it? The fact that he knew the man, but refused to tell us anything about him!"

Armin looked down at the translation journal. It had fallen onto a page they had recently translated together— an anecdote about the author's run in with a gang in the lower level of the capital of Wall Sina. The "boy" had been the highlight of that anecdote, because the boy reappeared later on to warn the author about wandering to the Sina underground, since the man  _clearly_  wasn't native to the city.

Armin turned the page, and saw what Hange had been talking about. In the midst of an argument, the narrator had asked the boy about books, and had gone off on a tangent. The kid had been silent, and according the journal he'd looked gloomy and close to homicidal. The man had asked the kid his name, and the boy had told him to fuck himself.

"I can't…" Armin struggled to find words. "I can't imagine Captain Levi as a kid."

Hange laughed and shrugged. "I don't think he'd be much different," Hange said, dropping into the chair and stretching. "But… heh." Hange smiled sheepishly, and tilted their head back at Armin. "I don't know him nearly as much as I'd like to."

"That…" Armin pressed his lips together as the boy in the journal reluctantly told the narrator his name. In Hange's thickly scrawled script, it said,  _"If it's anything to you," said the boy, looking at me rather defiantly, "I'm Levi._ " Armin couldn't help but smile.  _He sounds kind of like Eren_ , Armin thought. "That might be intentional."

"Oh, it definitely is," Hange said, ruffling their hair irritably. "But I don't take it personally. Anyways, what do you think?"

"Captain Levi never asked for the man's name," Armin said quietly. "Or, if he did, the man never mentions it."

"I don't think Levi knows it," Hange said. "That's definitely something he wouldn't have hid from us. It could be that because Levi was so young— and I definitely think he was young when this happened— he just didn't care to learn much about the man, because he was kind of a nobody?"

"Yeah," Armin agreed, closing the notebook. "But it definitely explains a few things about why the Captain wanted this deciphered."

"True!" Hange chirped, nodding eagerly. "Definitely true. Now, why do you think our mystery narrator brought this up?"

"I…" Armin looked down at the journal in surprise. "Oh. I didn't think about that. I don't know, maybe… he was just writing down his experiences?"

"But why code it?" Hange asked, sounding incredibly confused and annoyed. "Why go through all the trouble?"

"Maybe he… didn't want to get anyone into trouble?" Armin offered.

"But  _why_?" Hange asked sharply, not directing the ferocity at Armin, but rather at the ceiling. "Who  _was_  he?"

Armin stared at the squad leader, the translation journal feeling heavy in his hands. The light was low in the lamp, and outside the window was a blanket of darkness thicker than that of any sleep. Armin carefully walked up to the desk, setting the journal down.

"Squad Leader Hange," Armin said. "I think you should get some rest."

The squad leader looked startled. "Huh?" Hange asked, spluttering. "But—!"

"I know you have other work to do," Armin said slowly. "So you should get some sleep, so you can get back to that. I'll work on this tomorrow between chores."

Hange looked at him as though he had sprouted a third eye behind his fringe of thick blond hair. "But—!" Hange cried again. Armin quickly cut the squad leader off.

"Or I can take over for you right now!" Armin gasped, feeling desperate to let Hange have a break. "I mean, I just slept, so I should be fine."

Hange's brow furrowed, and shook their head. "No, I couldn't—"

"It's fine," Armin said, smiling and taking a step back. "I'm fine. I've pulled consecutive all-nighters before. Don't worry about it."

"No, that's—"

Armin cut Hange off once again, staring at their face with large, pleading eyes. "Please," Armin said. "I can do this."

Hange appeared uncertain, but their expression softened as though they finally let him convince them. Hange smiled softly, and rose to their feet, stretching their arms over their head and giving a lofty yawn. Armin jumped as their hand clamped over his head, ruffling his hair between long fingers.

"You're almost too nice," Hange said, sounding close to laughter.

Armin flushed, and shook his head. "No," he mumbled. "Not really…"

This time Hange did laugh, and they gave him a sharp shove toward the desk. "You better have some fresh information for me tomorrow," Hange said in a teasing voice. Armin could tell that the squad leader was exhausted though, their eyes betraying their lethargy. "Got it?"

"Yes," Armin said, settling in the vacant seat. "I told you, I can do this."

Hange smiled, and nodded slowly. "All right…" they said slowly. They backed away toward the door. "I'm gonna go…"

"Go," Armin said, focusing his attention on the journals. He waved her off. "Good night."

"Good  _morning_ ," Hange corrected, all too enthusiastically. They left Armin to his work, and he stared down at the little notebooks and sighed.

 _Hange's right, though_ , Armin thought glumly, picking up the older journal.  _Who are you?_


	2. Mater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should be a little more crushed at how little feedback I'm getting, but I expected it. Also, it's good to note that I wrote this fic for myself and because I love these characters too much. There isn't enough platonic love in this fandom. And I guess I just really hate that?

_**Histories and Annals** _

_Mater_

He was assigned to kitchen duty with Historia the next morning, while those with more physical strength and stamina went about outside work. They were getting prepared for some experiments with Eren, but they weren't quite ready yet. Armin wasn't sure if Eren was either, but he couldn't say anything. Eren would only get huffy.

Armin and Hange had neglected to eat the previous night, and due to Armin's all-nighter he was famished. Historia was quiet, per the usual nowadays, going through a perfunctory routine as she prepared the porridge. In all honesty, breakfast was so simple only one of them could do it, but Armin needed a break from decoding. His hand was cramped, and he needed to get up and move around, else he'd fall asleep at Hange's desk.

It was very quiet in the kitchen, to the point where it was almost awkward. Historia had her back to Armin as she focused on letting the water boil. He spotted a burlap sack in the corner full of oranges, and his stomach made a pathetic little mewling noise that made him frown. He wandered around the kitchen, and began to take an inventory of the spices they had stocked.

"You don't have to be in here," Historia said. It startled him so badly he nearly dropped the little pouch of ground peppercorns. He caught it in midair, giving a soft gasp, his eyes flashing to Historia's back. She did not look up from her station at the stove. "I'm fine on my own."

"Oh," Armin croaked, feeling embarrassed. Had he intruded? "I'm sorry, I was just… I kind of just wanted to get out of the study. If you want me to leave—"

"No," Historia said, her voice quiet and level. "Stay if you want. I was just saying… I can do this on my own."

"I understand," Armin said gently. She looked at him, and he saw that her eyes were a little dull.  _She misses Ymir_ , Armin thought, sympathy panging in his chest. He couldn't help but understand her sadness. Eren had been retrieved, but Ymir's fate was unknown. As was her allegiance.

Historia was quiet for a few minutes, and Armin rolled the bag of pepper in his hands, smiling vaguely as he glanced at the oranges in the corner. It was almost time for breakfast, though. Also, he would feel guilty taking an orange.

"What have you been doing in there?"

Armin jumped, surprised again that Historia had spoken. She had stepped away from the stove to look at him. He stared at her, biting his lip nervously. How could he explain the journals? They were confusing and weird, and they hadn't gotten much information out of them.

"Captain Levi has Hange and I working on deciphering a journal he stole from a man in Wall Sina," Armin said slowly, glancing away from Historia. "Um… over a decade ago."

"Why is it important?" she asked carefully. Armin looked at her, and saw her brow furrowed as though she was trying to link it all together. "Has it got anything to do with the Wall Cult?"

"Maybe," Armin said, giving in to temptation and wandering over to the burlap sack of oranges. "It did mention your dad somewhat, but the man who wrote it got sidetracked with other things."

"My dad," Historia said vacantly. "It doesn't mention me, does it?"

Armin shook his head. Though, he wasn't so sure. The last thing he had decoded was the man meeting the woman again, asking her if she was feeling any better. The woman had laughed at him, and told him that she was worse, so much worse. The man had told her that she should see a doctor, and she had said that she  _had_. She was pregnant.

That's when Armin had decided to take a break.

Historia looked relieved, and she nodded slowly. "Okay," she said. "Good."

Armin retrieved an orange carefully from the sack, and held it up so Historia could see it. She blinked rapidly. "You won't tell if I eat this, will you?" he asked, smiling weakly. "I didn't eat dinner last night."

"Oh, no," Historia said softly, shaking her head quickly. "Go ahead."

He smiled at her gratefully, and began to peel the orange, digging his fingers into its skin and tearing. Historia watched, and she turned back to the porridge, stirring it quietly. Armin was beginning to realize how little he actually talked to Historia. She'd always been a little quiet, but kind. She had just become incredibly reclusive without Ymir, and that worried him.

He stuck the peel inside the empty bag of oats sitting in the waste bin. He wandered back to where he had left the bag of ground peppercorn, and carefully pried it open, taking a pinch of the ground pepper and sprinkling it on an orange wedge. He stuck the slice between his teeth, nibbling at the delicate skin of the fruit, the pepper not quite hitting his tongue, as he sprinkled a little more on the rest of the orange.

He noticed Historia staring at him as he tied up the bag, chewing the peppered orange slice unthinkingly. Then he flushed, and swallowed quickly. "It's weird," he blurted, "I know, but I've been doing this since I was a little kid—"

"Can I have some?"

Armin stared at the girl, the taste of citrus and black pepper burning his tongue. "What?" he asked flatly. She stared back, her blue eyes moving from the orange to his face. "Oh. Yeah, sure."

He ripped off a slice, moving quickly to her side to hand it to her. She took it tentatively, and smiled up at him gratefully. She bit it, and turned away, chewing the orange thoughtfully as she stirred the porridge. Armin stared at her, expecting a violently negative reaction from the pepper. Historia finished the slice, and she turned her face away from him.

"Thank you," she said. Her voice sounded strained. He wondered if she was going to cry.

"I-I'm surprised," he said. "When Eren tried it, he couldn't even swallow it. He had to spit it out."

She laughed, a sweet and distant giggle that made him smile in alarm. She faced him, a genuine smile on her lips as she tilted her head upwards. "So did Ymir," Historia said. Her smile seemed to dampen a little at that, and she looked down.

Armin didn't know what to say. So he offered her the orange in his palm, and she stared at it for a moment before prying another peppered slice from it. They stood there, quietly eating the odd little snack, and before long Historia was smiling again.

"I don't think I've ever met anyone else who likes this," she said. She had finished the porridge, and was leaving it to stay warm. Now they leaned against the countertop, eating the orange slowly.

"Neither have I," Armin said. He thought about it for a moment, and then he shrugged. "Well, Mikasa tried it once, but I don't think she liked it. She just swallowed to be polite. How'd you discover it?"

"I don't know…" Historia said, nibbling her last slice. "I guess I just liked it when I was younger, and it stuck, or something. What about you?"

"Same," Armin admitted. "I can't even remember when I first tried it."

They both finished their respective slices, and stood against the countertop silently watching the wall across from them. Historia looked up at him, smiling dimly. "Thanks for sharing," she said softly.

"It's no problem at all," Armin responded quickly. "I'm just glad it's not that weird."

"It's kinda weird," Historia giggled. She held up her thumb and forefinger. "Just a little."

"Okay," Armin said, flushing a little, but laughing as well. "Well, if I'm weird, you're weird too."

"Okay," Historia agreed. "Sounds fair."

Armin looked away for a moment, and then he quickly looked back at her. She was no longer paying attention to him, and had focused herself on cleaning up the kitchen. "Hey," he said, quickly helping her with the task. "Historia… about your childhood…"

She paused without looking up at him, and then quickly resumed, as though she'd been startled by his words. "What about it?" she asked, sounding distracted.

"Well…" Armin pulled out the dishes from the cabinet as she continued to clean. "I know it's… not any consolation, but I think I can relate."

She glanced at him, her pale brows furrowing at him. It seemed he kept confusing her. "What do you mean?" she asked slowly.

"When I was little, the kids in Shiganshina would pick on me," Armin said, resting the dishes on the countertop. "I was weaker than them, and interested in the outside world, so they'd do things like throw me into walls, or push me into puddles, or kick the shit out of me, or even throw rocks." He smiled at Historia then, and he shrugged. "I always felt bad because Eren would try to help me, but then he'd just get beat up too. It was awful. I almost wish I could have hidden away, if it meant I didn't have to face them."

"No you don't," Historia said. He looked down at her guiltily, and she shook her head. "If… if I had just had a friend, like… like you had Eren…?" Historia smiled up at him sadly. "I would have been so much happier, I think…"

Armin closed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Don't be," she said. When he opened his eyes, she was smiling. "It's not like that anymore. I have friends."

Armin smiled back, and nodded. "Yeah," he said, picking up the dishes and laughing. "I guess, if you ever feel lonely, you should just remember that." He studied her face as she pawed the top few dishes off his stack. "That you're never alone."

She nodded quickly. "Thank you," she murmured.

They started out of the kitchen to set the dining room table, and Armin caught her smiling again. He was glad to see she wasn't broken, just lonely because of the loss of Ymir. And loneliness was easy to cure.

* * *

"Okay," Hange said, "so you're telling me you knew this guy for months and months and months… but you never bothered to learn his name?"

Levi scowled from his place in the doorway. He looked ready to abscond, but considering his hissy fit the previous night, he seemed to decide against it. Armin was sitting quietly at the desk, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible. This was between Levi and Hange, and he didn't want to be a part of their bickering.

"You don't think I didn't ask the shitface?" Levi looked up at the ceiling, and glanced at the door, as if he expected someone to walk in. "He didn't think it was safe to tell anyone his name. Not where I lived. He was such a fucking smartass, I didn't even care at the time."

"So what did you call him?" Hange asked eagerly. "I mean, he taught you how to read, so clearly you didn't just not call him anything…" Hange studied his face, eyes widening in amazement. "Unless you  _did_ —!"

"He didn't care what I called him," Levi cut in sharply, glaring up at Hange. "Like I said. It never mattered."

"But it matters  _now_!" Hange groaned, ruffling their hair in frustration. "What did he look like?"

Levi gave Hange a look, a dark little glower that suggested that Hange back up and shut up. "I can't even remember how many years ago this was," Levi said, his monotone voice growing harsh and biting. "And you think I can tell you what this wallfucker  _looked_  like?"

"Well, I don't know!" Hange cried, throwing their hands into the air. "Tell me  _something_!"

Levi sighed in frustration, looking ready to throw something again. He caught Armin looking at him, and Armin quickly turned his attention back to the journals. The man had offered to help the woman with her pregnancy. Because apparently he'd read medical books, and she wanted to keep it as quiet as possible.  _Well_ , Armin thought amusedly,  _there's no way this can go horribly wrong_.

"He was…" Levi seemed to struggle with the words, and Armin glanced at him. He looked uncomfortable. "Tall."

The room was quiet. Armin pressed his lips together tightly, and put a lot of pressure on the tip of his pen to keep himself from laughing. He was thankful Hange didn't laugh, because then he wouldn't have been able to contain himself. Instead, the squad leader was silent for a few moments, before making a soft little beseeching noise.

"Can you be a little more descriptive…?" Hange offered.

"I didn't fucking measure him, you nasty haired bitch," Levi said, his voice so quiet it sounded like a grumble.

"Okay, well, tall for you is—" Hange paused, and gave a shaky laugh. "Hey, hold on there, Levi, what're you—"

Armin looked back at them, alarm taking over him as Hange cried out in pain. Levi had Hange bending over backward, his hand grasping their ponytail, and he kicked the back of their knees.

"Yeow!" Hange gasped, giving another strangled laugh as they collapsed on their hands and knees. Armin jumped to his feet, feeling indescribably concerned for the squad leader, but also stunned at their audacity.  _How does Moblit deal with this all the time?_  Armin thought helplessly. "Hey, hey, I thought my hair was  _nasty_?"

Levi gave Hange head a sharp shove, and whirled away, releasing their hair. Once again, it seemed they had gained nothing from Levi. It was disheartening, knowing Levi had known their mystery author, and yet knew nothing about him at all. Armin wondered if Levi truly could not remember this man, or if he was just avoiding his past. If the man's descriptions served as any indicator, then Levi did not live a very good life prior to joining the Survey Corps. Not that it was very surprising. Harsh places bred harsh people.

Once again Levi slammed the door, and Armin helped Hange to their feet. "You know," Armin said. "You were kind of antagonizing him."

Hange huffed in response, adjusting their glasses and grimacing. "I was not," Hange whined, massaging the backs of their knees. "Wowie, that's gonna bruise."

Armin smiled at Hange weakly. "Maybe if we stop pushing," Armin said gently, not truly believing his words, "he'll feel more comfortable telling us?"

Hange glanced at him, and frowned. "You think he's  _uncomfortable_?" Hange asked, brown eyes growing wide.

"With talking about his past?" Armin shrugged. "Yes? I mean, he might also be… embarrassed, or something, because he was illiterate then?" Armin bit his lip, and shook his head furiously. "Oh, I don't know…"

"Hey, if you wanna guess at what goes on in Levi's twisted little noggin," Hange said, grinning as they held up their hands. "I'm all ears."

"Oh," Armin said, scratching his head uncertainly. "Well, I haven't got much beyond that. I don't exactly know him very well."

Hange gave a little laugh. "Oh, I don't think anyone really does," Hange admitted. "But that's just who he is, I guess!"

Armin smiled. "Maybe," he said. He turned back to the desk. The man had begun to detail his next experience with Levi. That was, Levi had appeared before the man with three contraband books, a shaved head, and so many cuts and bruises marring his face that he had been unrecognizable at first. The man had been hesitant to ask, and he wrote about how afraid he was of Levi and  _for_  Levi.

Then Armin translated something without thinking.

He reread it, and stared at it for a moment. Hange was sitting in the chair in the corner, possibly working on something else. Armin glanced back at them, and then quickly at the paper, the word glistening in wet ink. Had he… had he decoded that right? Armin crossed it out quickly, rapidly, listening to the pen scratch furiously against the paper.

But when he checked again, the word was the same.  _Wait_ , Armin thought, his heart thudding rapidly, and his mind halting at the thought.  _What?_  Armin didn't know what to think. Perhaps it was better that he didn't think at all, or else he'd over think it, and what would he do then? What could he do? This was certainly not something he was expecting to stumble upon!

So he tentatively left it out. As well as anything relating to it. He hoped Hange didn't attempt to check over his translations, but he thought that maybe Hange trusted him enough to have done it right. Eventually the lamplight drew low, and Armin, who was still hard at work, noticed Hange had fallen asleep at the chair in the corner. Armin smiled dimly, and he pulled his jacket from the back of the desk chair, wandering over to Hange and draping it over the slumbering squad leader. The wings of freedom were a shadow in the flickering light.

Armin scooped up the journals, hugging them against his chest as he took the lantern and headed cautiously toward the door. Hange gave a snore, and he smiled. He was fine. Hange wouldn't be waking up anytime soon. He stepped into the hall, shutting the door behind him, and walking very slowly through the darkened hall. Shadows spilt across the floor, hugging his legs and the walls as light bloomed before him in a spherical scope.

He ended up in the dining room. To his surprise, the table was not vacant. A candle was burning low, and Levi was sitting lazily, drinking tea in that odd crane-like grip of his. His dark eyes moved, but otherwise he did not acknowledge Armin's presence. Perhaps he just didn't care.

Armin set down the lantern carefully, as well as the journals, and he swallowed nervously. "Hello," he said.

Levi took a sip of his tea. Then he jerked his chin in what Armin could only assume was a greeting. He set the teacup down, his shadowy eyes narrowing as Armin slowly made his way to the chair across from him. Armin was surprised to see Levi, but glad. Levi was exactly the person he needed to talk to. Even if he was a little scared to death.

"What the fuck are you doing up?" Levi asked Armin. His eyes travelled to the journals, and he rolled his eyes. "Never mind. Let me try again. What the fuck are you doing in here?"

"I wanted to move, just in case Hange woke up," Armin admitted. He met Levi's eye with wariness as he sat down. "But I'm glad you're awake. I need to talk to you."

Levi looked unimpressed. "I told you two already," he said. "I don't remember the asshole. It was probably before you were even a thought passing through your parents' dirty fucking minds."

Armin was very quiet. He stared at Levi's face, his heart pounding, and he tried to evaluate the situation. He understood there would be consequences to dredging it up. The question was whether or not Armin was willing to gamble on Levi's ability to open up and speak.

"You never told him," Armin said softly, vacantly, tentatively prying open an old wound, knowing fully well how sensitive it was. "Did you?"

Levi's expression never changed, although his eyebrows briefly furrowed. "What are you mewling about?" Levi asked, resting back in his chair. "Shit, you need to stop spending so much time with Hange."

Armin noticed he was wearing his loose cotton shirt, clearly coming from bed. Had he had a nightmare? Armin wouldn't have blamed him. But was hard to see the man as anything other than the world's strongest soldier, or his callous commanding officer. The journal could be wrong. Maybe it was. Maybe it'd be better if they dropped it all together.

"You never told him…" Armin didn't want to say it. Levi was staring at him expectantly. "You were really young. Weren't you?"

"I'm pretty damn positive he knew I was young," Levi said, his eyes searching Armin's face. They flashed suddenly. "What did that journal say?"

Armin had to steady himself. He had to convince himself that he knew what he was doing. "You were a prostitute," Armin said. He said it in a calm, soft voice, as though he was speaking only to himself as a reassurance.

Levi stared at Armin, and in his eyes a thousand emotions seemed to skitter helplessly, and then die fast amongst a dark and furious blue haze. Before Armin could so much as blink, the man had gotten to his feet and rounded the table, grasping Armin by the front of his shirt and lifting him from his chair. Armin had been expecting this, and but he made a strangled noise of objection anyway, grappling at Levi's wrist.

"Hit me if you want," Armin gasped, his eyes widening. Levi had him dangling by the front of his shirt, choking and struggling. Levi's fist was pulled back, ready to strike. "You can explain the bruise to everyone— if you're up to it…"

Levi stared at him, and Armin knew he had caught him. Because this was certainly not common knowledge, and it certainly was not something that Levi wanted to explain to a bunch of teenagers. And so, with a curl of his lips, Levi dropped Armin. He landed in a crumpled heap, and before Levi could tear his wrist from Armin's grasp, the boy slid the sleeve of his shirt up. Armin was stunned to see a tattoo twisting about the muscle of his forearm. It was a black string of feathers clumping in an intricate design against his pale skin. It obscured the majority of the scars, but Armin could make out an awkward W, a haphazard H, and a painfully large O.

Levi's foot connected with his stomach, forcing him to let go, and he gave a shuddering gasp, his hands twitching toward his stomach. The pain lanced upward, settling inside his chest and causing his ribs to shiver. He squeezed his eyes shut as Levi grabbed him by a fistful of his hair.

"You're a little piece of scum," Levi spat.

Armin coughed weakly, wincing as he clutched his chest. "F-fair enough," he rasped. "Sir."

He let go of Armin by giving his head a shove, nearly smacking it against the side of the table. "Tell me exactly what it says about me," Levi ordered, standing above Armin with the most disturbing look about his child-like face. Levi looked far away, and yet ready to tear Armin apart.

"It doesn't…" Armin gave another weak cough, his stomach aching. "It doesn't say much… I didn't write it down, so… you don't have to worry about anyone else finding out, but…" He took a deep breath, and he looked up at Levi, his brow furrowing. "I didn't mean to find out."

"Tell me," Levi ordered, bending down before Armin, his eyes moving almost rapidly to read Armin's face. "What did that bastard know about me? How the fuck did he know?"

Armin swallowed, and wondered how much of his fear his face was betraying. "He guessed from the scar on your arm," he said. "Also, I think he asked around about you. Maybe he knew from the very beginning." Armin's eyes were wide. "I don't know." Armin had to take a deep breath. "I could have… pretended, you know. That I didn't find out." Armin shook his head furiously. "But I didn't."

"Because you're a stupid fucking fool," Levi said, closing his eyes. Then they snapped open, and he stood up. "You want me to talk about it, don't you, brat?"

Armin almost smiled. He pushed himself shakily to his feet, feeling a little sheepish as he nodded. "I think," he said quietly, "that you don't remember the man because you don't want to shed light on that part of your life."

"Oh, don't give me that bullshit," Levi scoffed. He sat back down, and folded his hands across his lips. "I was telling the truth, you little shit. I don't remember because it was so fucking long ago."

Armin sat down as well, noting how Levi was glaring at the journals. "Just tell me what you can," Armin said. "You want to identify him just as much as me."

"If it was that easy," Levi hissed, "don't you think I'd have done it years ago?"

"You didn't have a way to decipher the journal," Armin said. "The only reason we figured out the code is because it was from a book I read when I was younger, about the world outside the walls."

Levi looked at him, and he tilted his head as though Armin had said the most curious thing. "What did you say?" he asked.

"My book…" Armin repeated slowly. "About the outside world?"

Levi blinked, and he leaned back in his chair. "Where did you get a thing like that?" he asked.

Armin shifted uncomfortably in his seat under Levi's scrutiny. "Um," he said. "My… my grandpa gave it to me. I think it was my parents', but…"

"Your parents," Levi repeated. His eyes narrowed. "They died when the Wall fell?"

"No, they—" Armin stopped suddenly. As a child, he'd thought about it a lot. He'd asked a lot. He'd never gotten concrete answers. "They…"

"You don't know, do you?" Levi gave another scoff, and picked up his tea. "Aren't you supposed to be some sort of genius?"

Armin flushed. "My grandpa said they went outside the walls," Armin said quietly. "But…"

"Whatever," Levi sighed. "It's just weird. I had to scour the entire Sina underground to find books on the outside world. And you had one as a fucking bedtime story."

"Weird…" Armin stared as his hands. "I never thought so… but… I guess, maybe it was. Anyway, clearly you remember some things."

Levi looked ready to fling the candle at Armin. He didn't, thankfully, but he looked rather grumpy. "Do I need to spell it out in piss for you to understand me?" Levi leaned back in his chair. "I can't remember the asshole."

Armin was growing desperate. "But can you at the very least confirm that this was sixteen years ago?" Armin felt a little sick to his stomach, but he ignored it. He had to think.

Levi gave a sigh of irritation, watching Armin with a gaze that told him that he'd best be watching himself from now on. He was quiet for a few moments, looking undeniably uncertain, his lips pressing into a thin line. He seemed to be thinking about it, which was a good thing for Armin, but also likely troublesome for Levi. Armin didn't mean any harm, but it was inevitable.

"Sixteen…" Levi muttered, taking a sip of his tea. He shrugged, and Armin felt himself slump.  _Come on_ , Armin begged.  _Just give me something— anything_.

"Yes," Armin said. "Was it sixteen years ago?"

Levi met Armin's eye, and Armin felt more like throwing the candle now. Levi looked positively demonic in the faintness of the candlelight, the bruise-like bags under his eyes only accentuating his appearance more or less resembling a child's corpse.

"Yeah," Levi said finally. "Probably."

Armin needed a moment to assemble his thoughts. Sixteen years ago. Armin could say now that the woman their mystery writer had been meeting with was more than likely Historia Reiss's mother. If that was so, which he was almost certain it was, then a huge layer of the mystery had been peeled away. However, the man was still a mystery, as was his particular interest in the Walls as well as the outside world.

"Are you sure?" Armin asked tentatively.

Levi stared at him with his dark blue eyes shadowed even in the glare of the candle's flame. "No," he said quietly.

"How… exactly do you tell time?" Armin asked. Levi gave him a look, and Armin quickly reiterated. "I mean, I think you clearly have some idea when this was, but you aren't sure because… uh…"

"I go by the year," Levi said in his chilly monotone. "Usually. If I'm feeling wild, I'll try and figure it out by the amount of gray hairs I have."

Armin almost pointed out that Levi didn't have any gray hair. He realized very quickly what he'd be walking into, so he decided against it. "So," Armin said, choosing to ignore Levi's comment, "do you have any indicator of when this was?"

Levi scowled. "You have to give me something a little more specific than what I was at the time," Levi said. He was hesitant to speak, clearly, but it seemed his exhaustion had stolen his will from him. "The years blur together."

"You don't remember the year you learned how to read?" Armin asked, trying not to sound too shocked. "I'd think that'd be a huge indicator."

"Like I said," Levi said, his eyes narrowing impatiently. "The years blur."

"Okay," Armin said, nodding. He was getting somewhere, he could feel it. "Well, you were in a gang."

"I was always in a gang." Levi swirled his tea around his cup lazily.

"Um…" Armin had to think about it. Levi wasn't mentioned too much in the journal, but when he was there was a lot of negativity surrounding him. It didn't help that to the man writing, Levi had honestly been nothing more than a  _child_. It was likely Levi's youthful appearance had been what had convinced the man, who clearly had a strong sense of self-preservation considering the great lengths he went through to keep his name concealed, to trust him. "You… oh!" Armin sat up straighter as he recalled what he had only recently deciphered. "You'd been beaten up."

"I wonder if your awful pisspot of a mind can even begin to comprehend how little that narrows it down," Levi said. "Be fucking specific."

Armin sighed, and he brushed his hair from his eyes. "Okay," he said. "You were beaten up, and your head was shaved, and someone had carved the word _whore_  into your arm." He looked up at the ceiling, wondering how that had not been the indicator.

Levi, for a fraction of the second, seemed more than ready to go back to trying to beat the shit out of Armin. But instead, he sat quietly, his furious gaze falling upon Armin's face. Armin had to suppose he was thankful for Levi's exhaustion, because he was positive it was the only think keeping him from getting his face kicked in.

"I remember," he said. His voice never wavered, nor broke, nor held any sign of trauma. He spoke like he spoke about the weather, or pissing, or the secret to getting tough bloodstains out of the Survey Corps cloak. "My face got fucked up."

"Yeah," Armin said. "The journal said you were almost unrecognizable."

Levi shrugged. "It's not like I  _wanted_  to be recognized," the man said. "And it gave me the final excuse to change my profession to something that didn't make me want to set myself on fire."

Armin wasn't sure how to take that. In all honesty, Armin was out of his depth. He could not say he understood how Levi's youth had affected him, but he seemed to speak about it without much care. Perhaps he just didn't care anymore. Maybe that was it. Maybe Levi just didn't give a fuck about what Armin thought, since Armin already knew, and there was no hiding it.

He was still trying to figure out how to respond when Levi snapped his fingers before Armin's eyes. Armin jumped, blinking rapidly at the man across from him. His brow was furrowed, and his tired blue eyes seemed to assess him differently. "If I'm making you uncomfortable," Levi said in a low voice. "Say so."

"No," Armin blurted, shaking his head furiously. "N-no, that's not it—"  _Wait_ , Armin thought.  _Is he withholding information because he thinks I'll be uncomfortable?_  "Are  _you_  uncomfortable?"

Levi sat with his eyes heavily lidded, and his shoulders hunched. "Yeah," he said cautiously, watching Armin with the most intimidating stare the boy had ever witnessed. "There's a reason it's a fucking secret, you piece of shit."

Armin felt the urge to apologize, but he didn't. He pressed his lips together, praying that he didn't look as scared as he felt, and he folded his hands on the table. "The man who wrote the journal," Armin said carefully, "obviously cared about you a lot." Levi gave a little scoff. "He said he was scared for you."

"I was eighteen," Levi said in a dull voice. "I guess I was scared for me too."

Armin wondered how he had gotten so lucky as to find Levi in such an exhausted state. Certainly if the man was completely lucid he would not be speaking so candidly about himself. Armin had to be careful how he went about this, though, because Levi was not someone he particularly wanted to piss off. It was probably too little too late, but at the very least Levi was  _talking_.

"Okay," Armin said. "If you don't think he cared about you, then why would he have bothered to teach you how to read?"

"Charity." Levi leaned back, and he crossed his legs. "I dunno. I didn't care. He did me a solid, so I smuggled books for him. He didn't give a fuck if I was rotting in the filth of Wall Sina."

Armin wanted to say something comforting, but he didn't know how anything could soothe this kind of pain. He didn't think Levi would want Armin's pity, so he couldn't apologize. Armin was simply left to keep prying open that old wound, and hoping nothing snapped.

"What did you do after you, um, changed professions?" Armin asked. Levi gave him a scathing look, one that was all too familiar by now.

"I was a cutpurse," Levi said, resting his cheek against his knuckles. "And a cutthroat."

Armin looked down at his hands. Well, it wasn't surprising. "You know," Armin said, "I think you might have made a very good living selling books."

"Tch," Levi scoffed. "You don't know Sina very well."

Armin smiled. "No, not really," he admitted. "You're giving me a pretty good idea, though."

Levi said nothing. He stared at Armin, his cheek still resting against his fist. Their conversation had been enlightening, to say the least. And also entirely too frightening for what little Levi could actually give Armin. There was no denying his guilt for unearthing Levi's unsavory past, but it was a guilt he could deal with.

They stared at each other for a few minutes, and Armin's discomfort grew. Perhaps Levi could sense it, and continued to stare only to make Armin feel worse. The candle was nothing but a waxy stub, and the lantern Armin had brought with him had long since gone out. And yet, here they were, staring each other down.

"Can I ask you one more question?" Armin asked the man. He shrugged in response, his face a mass of shadows forming smooth lines. The light was so dim now that Armin could barely see Levi's eyes. "Why did you steal the journal?"

Levi looked at Armin, but there was no fury or bitterness. He looked tired and bored, as if Armin's curiosity could not longer draw emotion from him. "I knew the fucker had secrets," Levi said. "I think I've said this before."

"Yeah," Armin said, biting his lip. "But there's something else. You have to remember that day clearer than the rest— you would have forgotten about the journal years ago if it wasn't important to you. So… what exactly happened to the man?"

"If I knew—" Levi said, straightening up. Armin sensed his irritation, and quickly tried to amend himself.

"I know," Armin gasped. "If you knew, you'd have found him, but… that's just it. Where did he go?"

"You're the one who can decode the damn thing," Levi said. "Why are you asking me?"

"Because you sought him out," Armin said. "You have to remember that day, at the very least. Can you give me any kind of details at all?"

Levi sighed, and he looked away, his shoulders slumping miserably. "I never should have bothered with it," Levi said. "If I'd known it'd give me this much grief, I'd have burned the fucking thing."

"But it's important, isn't it?" Armin asked Levi desperately. He needed it to be important. It was important to him. "We have to identify this man so he can tell us about the Wall Cult."

"Which we know he wasn't a part of," Levi said irritably.

"But he knew things about them," Armin murmured. "He knew about Historia."

Levi looked at him, and then his head moved slowly to the unlit end of the table. He said nothing for a minute, and then he sighed again. "Okay, don't give me any of your bullshit," Levi warned. "This was sixteen years ago, and it's not something I think about a lot, so fuck if it's a little hazy. But I do remember that day a little. He… gave me a book or some shit to read, but it was one that I had smuggled for him, so he wanted it back. That's why I saw him that day. I gave him the book back, and stole his journal."

Armin watched Levi with wide eyes. "You read one of his books?" Armin asked. "On the outside world?"

"I dealt him those goddamn books," Levi said. "Of course I read them."

Armin couldn't help but smile. "You could have cracked the code," Armin told him. Levi stared at him, his expression entirely impassive.

"No," Levi said. "I couldn't."

Armin looked down, and he tried to make sense of that. How did he crack the code, then? What had he done that had been so effective? "Was there anything else about that day you remember?" Armin asked quietly.

Levi was silent. He hadn't touched his tea in awhile, and Armin supposed it had gone cold. Then he spoke, and it was slow and quiet, as though he was not entirely certain he was even speaking at all. "I think I went to look for him. He always stayed at the same damn inn, I just figured he'd be there. But… yeah, no." Levi closed his eyes, shaking his head slightly. "The only person who had gone through there that day had been a father and child from Wall Maria."

That caught Armin's attention. "Wall Maria?" he asked, eyes widening. "That's a little weird."

"I didn't think much of it," Levi said. "The shitrag was gone, so I didn't stick around."

Armin had to think about it for a moment.  _No, there's no way it was Historia_ , Armin thought.  _She was raised near her mother at the very least_. "Well," Armin said. "That's definitely a little strange."

"Not really," Levi said. He stood up, walking slowly to the edge of the table, out of the reach of the dim candlelight. He reappeared with the journals in his hands.

"I didn't write down anything about it," Armin said. "You can check."

"I will," Levi said, sitting down again.

Armin sat quietly, watching Levi begin to read the translations. He was a little surprised he had gotten as much as he had out of Levi, but equally disappointed because the information just seemed… inadequate. But Armin had a lot to piece together.

After a while, Armin's head began to droop. He rested his chin against his folded arms as Levi continued to read. "Did he ever talk about her?" Armin said. He was a little delirious from exhaustion.

Levi did not raise his eyes. Instead, he turned a crisp white page, his lips pressing together thinly. "No," he said. His voice was so soft, it was barely a whisper. It trickled across the silence of the room, breaking the darkness and shattering the eerie atmosphere.

Armin thought perhaps that wasn't all that strange. The man had not even shared his identity with Levi, so why would he reveal anything about his personal life? But Armin also had to wonder if Levi was a little bitter about it all. He couldn't be blamed if he was.

Armin fell asleep at the table, his thoughts swarmed by the contents of the journal. He could not escape it. It was chasing him, flagging him down and prying his eyes open. But he couldn't see a thing. He was plagued by words and pictures, symbols and codes that made no sense and yet, he understood them. He felt a daunting connection to the way the journal was strung together, as though it was tailored for his mind and his mind alone.

He was roused the next morning by a firm hand. His head was vaguely aching, perhaps from lack of sleep, and he squinted into the morning haze. The dining room was bathed faintly in the soft white glow of early morning. Armin blinked rapidly to clear his bleary eyes of sleep, and he looked up inquisitively at the figure who had awoken him.

Mikasa's dark eyes were taking in his face, searching it as though she was trying to find some concealed flaw.  _Ah_ , he couldn't help thinking groggily.  _It's a good thing Levi didn't punch me, then_ …

Armin's eyes widened momentarily, the hazy memory of his and Levi's conversation resurfacing. His gaze flashed to where Levi had been the night before, sitting directly across from him. The man was still there, nothing but a white lump and a disheveled black head of hair. His face was buried in his arms, the journal sitting beneath them.

"Armin?" Eren wandered into the room, looking half-asleep, but fully clothed. He rubbed his eyes, and blinked between Armin and Levi dazedly. "Whoa, what's going on?"

Mikasa tugged at his shirt, and frowned. "You've been wearing the same clothes for three days," Mikasa told him. He flushed, though he couldn't deny it.

"Did you sleep in here?" Eren asked, his voice booming in the vacancy of the dining room. Levi awoke with a sharp intake of breath, his head jerking upright. He immediately met Armin's eye, and saw the similar position they were in.

"Morning," Armin said weakly.

Levi stared at him. His eyes traveled to his teacup, and then the stub of wax that had once been a candle. Finally they fell upon the journal beneath his arms. For a moment, he seemed to focus on it, but his attention trailed away as he rose to his feet, pushing his chair in and taking his teacup to the kitchen. Armin watched him curiously, and he wondered how their conversation had affected the man.

"What were you two doing?" Eren asked, scooping up the journal and flipping through it. Armin wasn't concerned, because it was unlikely Eren would find the journal very interesting. "There're so many squigglies…"

"We were discussing something Hange and I have been trying to decipher," Armin said as Eren quickly got bored of trying to figure out what was happening in the journal.

"Oh," Eren said, his brows knitting together. He seemed to gain some semblance of lucidity, and he tilted his head down at Armin. "Anything good?"

"Not sure yet," Armin taking the journal back. "Ask me in a few days."

"Is this what you've been doing, then?" Eren asked, pointing at the journal. "'Cause you haven't exactly been around much."

"Oh," Armin said. It hadn't occurred to him that his absence would be noted, but it was no shock that Eren had noticed. He was Eren. He always cared a little too much. "I'm sorry. Yeah, I've been trying to decode this journal, in hopes that maybe the author knew some stuff about the Wall Cult."

"Well?" Eren asked, his green eyes widening. "Does he?"

Armin shrugged. "That's kinda what we've been trying to figure out, Eren," Armin laughed, pushing himself to his feet. His joints felt very stiff and inflexible, and his abdomen was vaguely aching from the kick Levi had delivered to it. Armin had to suppose he was lucky Levi had opted out of beating the shit out of him. Because Armin, now that he sort of recalled the previous night, had been entirely insensitive about the entire situation.

Jean lumbered into the dining room with Sasha close behind. "What's for breakfast?" Sasha asked, sounding half in a dream.

"Same thing as yesterday," Jean said, his eyes moving suspiciously between the trio. "Did something happen?"

Eren glanced at Jean, and he gave small scoff. "Why the hell are you jumping to that conclusion?"

Jean's eyes narrowed, and he tossed his hands into the air. "Well, I dunno, Eren," Jean said. "Maybe you should look at your track record, and then ask me that again."

"Okay…" Armin said slowly, scooping up the journal. "I'm going to go wake up Hange…"

Armin took the other journal, the older one, and he carefully ducked out. He thought about Levi, who likely despised him for various reasons, and he thought about what possibly lay ahead in the journal. Hange could stumble upon Levi's past at any given time. He had no control over that.

Armin began to flip through the older journal, taking in the drawings as opposed to the words. He handled the aged yellow paper delicately, turning the pages with only the tips of his fingers. He found the page where Levi had been beaten up, and he studied the drawing that had been inked under the vague words that had ciphered Levi's true predicament. The picture was of some small peak of ice perched upon a sea. There was a faint squiggle, a lapping of artistic waves against the ice as the drawing peered below the surface. The ice mountain was inverted. It was larger beneath the water.

His examination of the drawing had distracted him, and for that reason he ended up stumbling in the hallway, his mouth smacking rather painfully into someone's forehead. The journals slipped from Armin's fingers as he doubled back rapidly, his hands clamping over his mouth. He heard a soft little gasp, and Armin watched Historia's fingers move carefully beneath her fringe of blonde hair.

"Oh," Armin choked through bruised lips, "I'm so sorry—"

"No," Historia said, rubbing her head distantly, never looking up at him. "No, that was my fault. I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Neither was I," Armin objected.

Historia didn't answer. She had crouched to the ground, kneeling carefully to pick up Armin's books. He felt very guilty, and he bent down to help her, his stomach viciously objecting.  _Do bruises scar_ , Armin thought,  _because I think I'm going to feel Levi's kick forever_. Armin recalled that Eren had been beaten far worse by Levi, and was more or less okay after the encounter. And then Armin recalled Eren's Titan powers, and frowned.

"Are you okay?" Armin asked, taking the translation journal. Historia glanced up at him, and he noticed that she had opened the older, coded journal to the page he had just been on.

"Hmm?" She nodded quickly, her eyes darting back to the journal. "Hey, Armin? What's the iceberg for?"

Armin looked at her vacantly. "What?" he asked her flatly.

Historia turned the journal to him, and pointed to the drawing of the inverted ice mountain. Armin opened his mouth. And then he closed it. He wasn't exactly sure how to respond to her. Iceberg? "Wait," he said. "Is that what it's called?"

Historia smiled faintly, looking vaguely baffled. "Yes," she said. She pulled the journal back, and examined the page curiously. "They're… oh, I don't know how to explain it…" She sighed, and shook her head. "But that's what they're called."

"How do you know that?" Armin asked her, his eyes widening. "I-I mean, I know what they are, but I didn't know they had that name."

"Mmhmm," Historia hummed, her eyes fluttering closed momentarily. "I think it comes from, um, a really old word—  _eis_ , or…  _ijs_ …  _berg_ …" She bit her lip, and opened her eyes, shrugging. "Meaning ice mountain."

Armin stared at her, feeling a rush of awe as he listened to the tiny girl speaking. "Where did you learn that?" He asked her eagerly. She blinked up at him rapidly, looking stunned at his sudden interest in what she had to say.

"Oh," she said quietly. "A… a book, I think, when I was little."

"You had books on the outside world?" Armin asked, feeling the need to grab Historia's arms and shake her excitedly. Of course, he didn't, but he was very tempted to.

"Um, yes?" she asked, her eyes growing wide. "Is that strange?"

"Well, they're not exactly legal…" Armin bent completely to his knees, so he and Historia were completely eye to eye. Her large blue eyes were watching him with varying degrees of hesitance and confusion.

"Well, no," Historia said. "But I always thought that the illegality of it was just a… a thing that wasn't really enforced, and was ignored, and…?" She flushed, her eyes widening. "By the look on your face, I'm going to guess that's a no."

"I only had one book on the outside world," Armin said, "and I got beaten up constantly for being a heretic."

Historia looked away. "Well," she said, "I didn't really have anyone to convince me otherwise…"

Armin had to look away as well, his eyes casting down to the journal sitting heavily in his hands. "Sorry," he said awkwardly. She peered at him, and then closed the little book with a snap.

"So, um, what's the iceberg for…?" Historia asked tentatively, offering the journal to him. Armin took it.

"I'm not really sure," Armin admitted. "It's a symbol for  _something_ , but…"

Historia picked herself up from the floor, dusting off her skirt with a pensive look in her eyes. She offered him her hand, and he smiled gratefully as he took it. "It could mean…" Historia frowned, and tucked a few loose strands of pale blonde hair behind her ear. "Oh, I don't know…"

"It's okay," Armin said, hugging the journals to his chest and smiling at her gratefully. "I'm still trying to figure it out."

Historia bit her lip, and said nothing. Armin was beginning to sense that Historia rarely ever said what she was truly thinking. That was worrying, and he wondered how Ymir had gotten her to open up. He didn't know, and he couldn't help the faint, numbing sadness that came with the revelation that maybe she just didn't want to talk to him.

They parted ways without a word, and Armin entered the study with a heavy heart and an aching abdomen.


	3. Frater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The explanation for this long-ass chapter is this: four chapters cut unevenly accidentally by a girl who cannot do fractions. Actually, the last chapter is completely different because I switch point of views. That's another reason why this one is so long.
> 
> It might be a little while until I update again, because though I AM on the last chapter (possibly halfway done), I'm writing a birthday present for a friend, so I have to focus on that due to time constraints.

_**Histories and Annals** _

_Frater_

Armin avoided giving up the journals, and continued to translate them on his own. Hange was growing busier and busier with only a few days left until Eren's scheduled experimentation day, so they didn't exactly care all that much. Levi did not breech the topic of the journal, nor did anything about how he perceived Armin change. It wasn't all that surprising, but Armin had to admit it was interesting that Levi chose not to react.

The journal seemed to be rapidly speeding up in terms of time. The woman, who could only be Historia's mother, had moved back home in order to have her baby. She'd invited the man to come along, and Armin was hopeless in trying to understand the woman. He didn't think he  _wanted_  to. After all, she'd been undeniably cruel to Historia, and Armin had to wonder why the man trusted her.

Unless, of course, the man didn't. Armin was seeing shades of wariness in the man's writing, but it was clear that the man had been caught inside the woman's thrall. Armin pitied him. And worst of all, the woman seemed to almost… reciprocate his very clear feelings for her.

 _This is weird_ , Armin thought. He sat back in his chair, glancing around the empty study. He debated on whether or not telling Historia about it all was a good or bad idea. On one hand, he had a journal of a man who had fallen in love with her mother. On the other hand, the journal could be seen as rather creepy from her standpoint, and Armin wouldn't blame her for being uncomfortable with it. Hell,  _he_  was getting a little uncomfortable with it. Wasn't he supposed to be looking for some information on the Titans? And yet, here he was, decoding some poor man's unrequited love for Historia Reiss's hopelessly sad, sorry excuse for a mother.

There was a knock at the door. Armin stretched his arms above his head, wincing at the ache in his back. The sun had set, and another day had gone by of Armin pouring over the journals. He really needed to get his life back in order.

The door opened without Armin's response, and Eren strolled in. "Hey," Eren said, squinting through the dimness of the room. Armin knew it was rather dark, and the light from his lantern barely glistened against the glassy black surface of the windows. "I haven't seen you since this morning."

"Oh," Armin said, blinking up at Eren wildly. "Sorry. I've been busy."

"Yeah…" Eren wandered over to the desk looking rather like a heavy silhouette, his body a massive shadow as it neared. The light spilt across his features, making his green eyes glow faintly, gold glinting in a ring around his pupils. "You haven't gotten much sleep."

Armin looked down at his papers. It was rather alarming that Eren was worried about him. "I think I'm fine," Armin said. "I mean, we've all gone way longer without sleep."

Eren shrugged. "I guess," he said. "But you probably should still… like, come out to eat, and stuff…" Eren's body rocked back and forth in place, and his lips twisted awkwardly. "Shit. Okay, what's going on?"

Armin looked up at Eren, stunned for a moment. "What do you mean?" Armin blurted.

"This!" Eren waved his hands over the desk full of scraps and journals. "Whatever this is, I dunno! You haven't said a thing about it, but I feel like you and Hange, and Captain Levi, you're all in on this huge fucking secret, and you usually tell me this stuff…"

"I-it's not a secret," Armin gasped. "Not really."

Eren huffed, and folded his arms across his chest. "Well it definitely is to the Captain," he grumbled, glaring at the window with a good amount of glumness. "When I asked him, he told me to go clean the fucking washroom."

Armin knew, of course, that Levi was merely avoiding the possibility of someone else finding out. The man couldn't be blamed for that. "It's honestly not even that interesting," Armin said. Eren gave a sharp, derisive snort. "I'm serious!"

"Yeah, okay," Eren said, rolling his eyes. "Never ever in your entire life have you ever not found something interesting, so bull fucking shit."

Armin sighed, and he looked up at Eren with a frown. "Just because  _I_  find something interesting," he said, "doesn't mean you will."

"Okay, but…" Eren stretched out his hands his fingers grasping at air. "What  _is_  it?"

"Just a journal of a guy who might've been involved in the Wall Cult," Armin said.

"Okay…" Eren's eyes narrowed, and he planted a hand on the desk and scowled. "That's definitely not all."

"It's definitely not," Armin agreed. "But I don't know what else to say. It's not  _interesting_ , it's not…"  _It's got nothing to do with Titans_ , Armin thought.  _So what the hell am I doing?_ "Oh, I don't know…"

"Yeah you do," Eren said. "You're just not telling."

"It's probably a waste of time," Armin admitted, rising slowly to his feet. He rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing at the pain. "But I can't stop."

"Can't stop, or won't stop?"

Armin stood there for a moment, his body freezing mid-stretch. He glanced at Eren with widening eyes. "What?" he asked in a careful, stunned voice.

Eren wasn't even looking at him. He had his arms folded, his chin tucking in as he looked at the desk. "Well, if it's really a waste of time," Eren said, "then you could stop whenever, 'cause you're not the only one working on it, right? I mean, what exactly were your orders?"

The truth was, Armin wasn't exactly sure he'd been given orders. He tried to remember what Hange had said to him when they had dragged him into the room, but he couldn't. It was all a blur of words and symbols and codes bouncing inside his brain. Had he been given orders at all? Or was he just doing this to sate his hopeless curiosity? Was he deciphering the journals for humanity's sake, or his own?

Armin was certain that this had not been Eren's intentional question. Eren had simply been inquiring if Armin needed to keep at it, or if he was just too stubborn to quit. He hadn't been concerned with Armin's state of mind, because by Eren's account Armin was perfectly stable. Not that Eren had much room to judge if not.

"I don't know," Armin said quietly. He bowed his head, his pale blond hair tickling his cheeks. "I guess… I should go eat now, huh?"

"That'd be a good idea," Eren said. He was eying the desk suspiciously, as if the papers were about to come alive and attack him. Armin pushed in his chair and started towards the doorway. "By the way, what  _did_  happen last night?"

Armin paused. He turned his head back to Eren, blinking at him confusedly. "Huh?"

"Between you and Captain Levi," Eren said, watching him with furrowed eyebrows. "Like, were you just workin' on this shit, or…?"

"Oh." Armin wished Eren would just drop it. "Yeah, pretty much. He hasn't gotten a chance to really look at it since we started translating, so he wanted to."

"Why was he even up that late, though?" Eren asked, frowning. "What…?"

"Eren," Armin said carefully. "If I knew how Captain Levi's mind worked, I would tell you. But I'm just as clueless as you are. He was already in the room when I went in there."

Eren seemed to catch onto how his questions were going nowhere. He glanced at the desk again, and his eyebrows rose in surprise. "Hey, is that the ocean?"

Armin sighed. "Yes," Armin said, smiling slightly. "It's part of the code."

"Huh." Eren peered at the desk, and then he shrugged, turning back to Armin. "Cool. What's it mean?"

Armin smiled wider. "Uh, basically?" Armin shrugged. "It represents the unattainable."

"That's a pretty broad spectrum, though, isn't it?" Eren asked, frowning.

"Yeah." Armin didn't know how to say that the ocean represented Historia's mother, who, to the author, was completely unattainable. So he decided to say nothing. It was just so much easier, he realized, than explaining the entire thing. And he would explain it, that wasn't even a question. It was simply that Armin didn't have the entire story straight. How could he explain anything without knowing all the facts?

Armin decided to leave then without another word. As he expected, Eren followed hesitantly, and they walked slowly though the hallway. There was light streaming into the hall from the cluster of candles resting on the table of the dining room. Jean, Connie, Sasha, Mikasa, and Historia were sitting there, and Armin could hear Sasha and Jean quipping at each other.

"Hey," Eren called, marching up beside Mikasa, and pulling out a chair. "Deal me in."

"Seriously, Eren?" Jean sighed, his eyes rolling. "Your poker-face is the  _worst_."

"What?" Eren's expression twisted with vague disdain. "No it ain't, shut up."

"Yeah, Jean," Connie said. "Eren's poker face isn't much worse than any of ours."

"Except Mikasa's," Sasha piped up, her brown eyes flashing to Mikasa's face. The dark haired girl was sitting placidly, looking ahead of her with a rather bored expression.

"Okay, well," Connie sighed, "given."

"What are you betting?" Armin asked curiously.

"Extra chores we're willing to do," Sasha said. Armin's eyes traveled to the center of the table, were shreds of paper sat in a small pile. He could read the writing of some in the shimmer of candlelight, and it only confirmed what Sasha had said.

Armin wasn't particularly interested in playing a card game, so he smiled and excused himself. He felt Historia's eyes follow him as he entered the kitchen, and paused to consider what he was going to eat.  _Tomorrow_ , he thought, rubbing his face tiredly,  _I should really just eat with everyone else_. It would be the smart thing to do, surely. But Armin was so enrapt in his own mind, he often forgot that there was a world around him. He appreciated that no one seemed to want to pull him out of this, but at the same time he felt that maybe someone needed to.

"Armin?"

He whirled around, startled by the sound of Historia's tiny voice. She was standing in the doorway, hugging her arms and frowning up at him. It was rather dark in the kitchen, with nothing but a small lamp near the door leading outside to illuminate the tiny room. Historia appeared looking rather impish in the fractured light, her features shadowy and obscured by the blanket of night. Her eyes were visible beneath the hazy outline of her hair, burning brightly with unparalleled worry.

It had been awhile since Armin had seen anything more than a spark in Historia's eyes. So he smiled at her gently.

"Hey," he said. "Is something wrong?"

Historia shook her head quickly. "No," she said, still shaking her head furiously. "No, I… I was about to ask you that…"

"Oh," he said. He felt a little embarrassed. "No, I'm fine. Why?"

Historia's lips pressed together thinly, as though she had something to say but she couldn't quite spit it out. She shrugged, and glanced away from his face. "Eren told me to make sure you ate something," she said quietly.

Armin swallowed a groan, and he shook his head. "Does he think I came in here to  _avoid_  eating?" Armin gave a little scoff, and Historia shrugged.

"Well you haven't been eating much lately…" Historia said slowly. She didn't raise her eyes to him, and instead focused on the lantern. "Or sleeping…"

"I know, I know," Armin sighed. "It's getting to be a real problem. But this isn't really anything new. I'm always like this when I start a new project."

"I think it's different now, Armin," Historia said. She sounded very hesitant to speak, as though she wasn't sure if she wanted to say what her words were conveying. "You need your strength…"

Armin found himself nodding in agreement, though he wasn't sure he'd be able to change his habits. He probably should try, though. Because Historia was right, and what he was doing could easily backfire on him at a later date. Maybe it was best if he just let the journal go for a little while.  _Who's to say I'll be able to in a little while_ , a small voice in his head whispered. That made him feel compelled to rush back to the study to decipher some more.

"So," Armin said, hoping to change the subject from his terrible eating and sleeping habits, "you're not playing?"

"I'm no good at it."

"Neither am I," Armin admitted. He thought about it for a moment, and he shrugged. "Or at least, I never used to be. Who knows?"

Historia's gaze shifted back to his face, and she eyed him for a few moments. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, and moved carefully past Armin. He watched her walk to the corner of the kitchen, her body blending in with the shadows. Armin heard her rummaging, and he knew exactly what she retrieved before she turned back to him, offering out an orange.

Armin smiled, and he took it. "You wanna split it?" he asked her.

She looked at him, and he was stunned at how her eyes seemed to narrow in something that could almost be anger. "No," she said, her voice its usual quiet, placid tone. "I ate already."

"Oh." Armin rolled the orange in his hands, feeling a little awkward. So he decided to turn away from the tiny girl, and head toward the door. He paused when he heard her uncertain shuffling, and he turned to look at her. "I'm going to sit on the porch," he said. "You're welcome to join."

She watched him, a quiet little shadow in the vacant kitchen. Armin shrugged, and he opened the door, exiting the kitchen without a word. The night was a little chillier than most, but he enjoyed the breeze. It drifted through his hair, kissing his cheeks and tickling his ears. He stepped slowly toward the steps, planting his feet carefully and uncertainly. He sat down, and then he closed his eyes. He could hear a symphony of crickets bellowing all around him.

As he began to peel his orange, the door opened and closed very softly behind him. He didn't look up as a tiny pair of boots appeared beside his own. Historia sat down without making a sound, and she stared out into the vast expanse of land around them. The forest was visible from where they sat. Armin tore at the skin of the orange, and when he was finished Historia offered him the bag of ground peppercorn. He looked down at her, stunned.

She shrugged. "You forgot it," she said.

"Thanks," Armin said, taking the bag from her dainty fingers. He ended up setting it between them so he could pry open the orange to get all the wedges equally sprinkled with pepper.

He offered her a wedge of the orange, and she stared at him for a long time before giving in. She took the peppered orange slice, waiting for Armin to take the first bite. They sat like this for a few minutes, quietly staring out into the darkness around them, and not a word uttered between them.

"I've been thinking," Historia said distantly. "About the iceberg."

Armin straightened up, unable to contain his interest. "Oh?" he asked, his eyes widening at the girl. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Historia said, nodding. "I've been thinking about the books I've read about them, and there used to be this expression…"

"Expression," Armin repeated. "Really?"

She nodded again, and she opened her mouth. Then she closed it, and he could tell she was having trouble articulating herself. "Um…" She looked around suddenly, and then jumped to her feet. "Oh!" Armin had to muffle a yelp as Historia jumped over the rail of the porch, disappearing behind the wooden beam.  _What is she_ doing _?_  Armin wondered wildly.

Historia reappeared very fast, holding a long twig in her tiny fist. She looked rather pleased with herself.

"Um, Historia…" Armin said hesitantly. "That's a stick…"

"Yes," Historia said. For a moment Armin was afraid she might whack him with it. Instead, she knelt down on the step below Armin, just where the stair met the earth. "Can you grab that lantern from inside?"

Armin stared at her for a moment, and he quickly obliged, scooping up the bag of pepper and his orange peel to deposit as he went. When he returned with the lantern, Historia was doodling in the dirt. Armin had to smile, and he was reminded of doing something similar with Eren when he'd been younger. "What are you drawing?" Armin asked.

Historia leaned back, and she pushed her hair away from her face. Armin held out the lantern, angling it so it spilt light across the dry patch of dirt at the foot of the steps. The faint yellow light filled in the contours of a crude little drawing of what Armin imagined was an iceberg.

"See," Historia said carefully, "what I was thinking about was this expression that people used to say, way back when." Historia tapped the stick idly against the wooden step, and Armin listened to the gentle  _thunk-thunk-thunk_ , a drum that could coincide with a heartbeat. "The tip of the iceberg. As in… you know…" She pointed to the peak of her little iceberg, which was nothing but a little bulb in comparison to the monstrous squiggly mass beneath a vaguely waving line. "The surface."

"Right…" Armin said, trying to catch her thought process. "So… this is all the water, right?" Armin gestured to the wavy line separating the tiny peak from the rest of the iceberg. Historia nodded. "And… that would mean that, if we were ever to actually see an iceberg…"

"Theoretically," Historia piped up. Armin glanced at her face.  _She's enjoying this_ , Armin thought. He was happy at this revelation.

"Right, theoretically, if we were ever to actually see an iceberg, we'd just get this bit here—" Armin lowered himself down a step, and leaned over, pointing at the dirt where Historia had dug out the very tip of the ice mountain. "Everything else though, all of this ice beneath the surface, it's not immediately visible. That's what you're saying?"

"Yes!" Historia nodded eagerly. "Exactly. That's exactly what it means." She pointed at the same spot Armin was pointing to "What is visible to the naked eye is so misleading that if a person doesn't look a little deeper, they'll miss the entirety of it."

Armin stared at her for a moment. "Oh," he said. "Whoa. You… just put this into perspective for me." Armin had suspected the iceberg represented Levi, but now the pieces fell into place. It made  _sense_.

Historia shrugged, and she leaned back, resting her stick across her knees. "Well, like I said," she said quietly. "I've been thinking about it."

Armin smiled at her. "Thanks," he said in an equally quiet voice. She rested her chin in her palms, staring ahead into the deepening darkness of nightfall, and she said nothing. "You know a lot about this…"

"I read a lot about it," she said.

Armin sighed, and looked down at his hands, which were now folded in his lap. "I wish I could get my hands on some of those books," he admitted. "It sounds like yours went into a lot more detail than mine did."

"I'm not sure…" Historia tilted her head up toward the sky. "I guess so, maybe? I never… really noticed."

"What other books did you read?" Armin asked, feeling a little desperate for more information. Historia glanced at him, her pale face shadowy in the glow of the lamp. She looked almost wary of him.

"Well…" She sighed, her eyes moving up at the sky again. They roved it for a moment, rapidly moving as if she was memorizing the map of it. "I read a book or two on astrology."

"Oh yeah?" Armin knew a bit about astrology, or at least enough to be able to read the stars to navigate. He'd never been able to get a hold of anything extensive about it, though.

Historia nodded, her neck craned as she searched the sky. And then she began to speak. Very quietly, and very suddenly, her words became ceaseless, and they were certain and precise, rolling from her tongue with an uninhibited strength. Armin listened to her with a mixture of awe and astonishment as she began to rattle off constellation names that he had never heard of. Minutes ticked by, and he became engrossed in everything she said, despite her uncertainties and various backtracking. Armin twisted his head upward to get a better look at the sky, and ended up flopping onto his back somewhere near where Historia had drawn her iceberg.

Historia had paused at that. "Am I boring you?" she asked.

"No," Armin said, his head resting in a pillow of grass. "Not at all. I just wanted to get a better look."

Historia seemed to consider this for a moment, and she peered up at the sky. "You'll get all dirty," she said.

"I haven't changed my clothes in three days," Armin reminded her.

Historia seemed to take that fairly. She bit her lip, and studied the sky for a moment before carefully pushing herself off the step. The grass crunched beneath her boots, and the wind slithered through the thin, short blades, tickling Armin's cheeks and ruffling his hair. He heard Historia sit down, but he did not see her. He realized, twisted his head about, that she was behind him. Her hair was nearly brushing the top of his head, as she lay opposite him.

"What was I saying?" Historia asked.

"Ursa Major," Armin said, scanning the vast expanse of velvet sky for the stars that Historia had pointed out to him.

"Oh," she said. "Right. You know the Plough, right?"

"The what?" He could no longer see her face, so he could not study it to try and understand what she had meant.

"The Plough," Historia repeated. He saw her arm shoot into the air, her index finger extended as she pointed vaguely to the heavens. "In the Ursa Major, the string of stars that make that hooked sort of look?"

"The…" Armin blinked rapidly. "The Big Dipper?"

"What?"

Armin wondered if it had been her books that had taught her that name, or if they had just grown up in two entirely different worlds. He'd never thought about it, but he supposed that growing up in Shiganshina alongside Eren had given him the opposite sort of upbringing Historia had had. Yes, Armin had been reclusive, and yes, he had been bullied, but he had been free to run about the city as he pleased. His grandfather had always allowed him that liberty. Historia had been shut inside her own little world, never allowed to explore or learn things through experience.

"That's what I've always called it," Armin said slowly. "The Big Dipper. It looks a bit like a ladle, don't you think?"

Armin listened to the grass rustling as Historia twisted to look at the sky from a different angle. "Oh," she said. "Yes. I see it. The book I read called it, um…  _steelpannetje_? And, also… grob— grober… oh, I don't know how to pronounce it…  _gro_ _ßer wagen_ …?"

" _What_?" Armin almost laughed. He bent his head back, his eyes widening with unbridled curiosity. "What does  _that_  mean?"

"Saucepan," Historia said thoughtlessly. "And, um, great cart…? I think. That's what the footnotes said."

"What languages are those?" Armin asked.

"I don't know," she murmured. "Old ones."

"The book must have said something about them…"

"I don't remember every little detail," Historia said. She sounded almost bristly, as though she was irritated at how much he was prying. Armin felt a little guilty for that. "I… I just… my memory is selective, I guess… I remember what I found interesting."

Armin could not blame her for that. Historia wasn't him— of course she couldn't remember everything. It was unfair of him to expect her to. He was getting overexcited, it seemed, at the new information he was gaining from Historia's extensive reading as a child. For a moment, Armin found himself envious of her position.  _If we could have switched places_ , Armin thought vainly,  _then I could have had all those books and no one to tease me about them so long as I stayed away from the fence. And you'd have an entire city, Historia, to explore and play in without any shame of your birth_. But then, Armin would not have Eren and Mikasa. He wouldn't have had his grandpa, or the little love he was truly granted as a child. He would have had books, but what was their worth, anyway, without someone to share those treasured words with?

"Can't you find Polaris from looking at it?" Armin asked, deciding to change the subject.

"I think so." He watched her arm extend skyward again, her fingertips splaying above them. They curled inward, leaving only her index finger to point to the lower right hand corner of the Big Dipper. "That star there, it's called Merak."

"And that one is Dubhe," Armin said, recalling the lessons they'd been given in navigation when training. "So Polaris is…"

"There!" Historia pointed, and Armin spotted the star through its position to the Big Dipper. "North."

"That's where your home is, right?" Armin asked.

Historia was silent. Armin shifted uncomfortably, his eyes darting uncertainly. Had he upset her? The silence was excruciatingly uncomfortable, and nothing filled it but the vicious screeching of crickets, and the trembling of the wind as it made rapid contact with the earth. Historia was the type of person who he just… couldn't read. He was overwhelmed by the urge to learn more about her, to be the friend she needed in order to keep going, to convince her of the world's worth even if Ymir wasn't here to share it with her.

Armin understood her sense of loss. He truly did. Because, not too long ago, he had thought he'd lost Eren forever. He knew exactly how terrible it was, the hollow that swallowed up the heart when someone close was ripped away. There was no accounting for Ymir's life, and so Historia was likely worried, and that was not without warrant.

"No," Historia said. "I wouldn't call it home."

"Oh." Armin stared at the sky, tracing the path of the Big Dipper to the North Star, which was held inside the Little Dipper. "Well, where you lived when you were little, then."

Historia was silent for a few moments. "Yeah," she said quietly. "North."

"So, essentially," Armin said, "we could follow Polaris there if we wanted to."

Again, Historia was quiet. She seemed to mull over his words. "Essentially…" she said. "Yes. But… who actually would want to?"

"Oh… I don't know," Armin said with a sigh. "I'm just… thinking out loud, I guess." He didn't know how to tell her what he was really thinking about. The journal, and the mystery man who had fallen in love with Historia's mother. How did he explain a thing like that?

"I… noticed." Historia's voice was wispy and thin, as though she didn't quite know how to control her worry. "Are you sure you're okay, Armin?"

"Absolutely."

They laid there, their backs to the earth, and their eyes to the stars. Inside their eyes, the massive expanse of darkness reflected, shimmering inside the pairs of blue like twin pools. The stars dug into their eyes, and glimmered inside their minds, burning intensely, unfaltering and universal, fluttering madly in defiance of the great cosmic scale.

"You know," Historia whispered, "I read that the stars that we see… all of them, with all that light and life in them? They're all dead by the time that light reaches us."

Armin thought over this, deciding to turn her words over in his mind rather than reply immediately with his questions. There was something very surreal about the thought that the patterns of light he was observing were already gone from existence. It was a tribute to how fleeting life was.

"I guess in this world," Armin said, "not even the stars can last."

There was a faint rustling of boots against grass, a sound that broke the night air with a delicate precision, and Armin bolted upright. In a shroud of darkness, Levi's small silhouette was just visible in the gleam of the lamp that rested on the porch. He had a rifle resting on his shoulder, and Armin realized that he must have taken watch, as opposed to the others who were inside playing poker.

"What the fuck are you two doing?"

Armin stared at the man, who had not so much as made eye contact with him since that morning, and he swallowed uncomfortably. Historia sat up behind him, and they exchanged a frantic look. "Um…" Armin said. "We were just stargazing?"

"Yeah, I can see that," Levi said. His slow, quiet voice was viciously cold. "Get off the ground. You're going to get lice."

Armin quickly jumped to his feet, Historia close behind him, dusting off her skirt and glancing between Armin and Levi with heavily lidded eyes. "You have grass in your hair, Armin," she said quietly.

"Huh?" Armin's fingers flew to his head, running through his disheveled blond hair and plucking blades of grass from the thin strands. He glanced at her, and saw that there was grass tucked between the hair gathered in her ponytail. "Um, you do too…"

She frowned a little, and touched her hair hesitantly. She pulled it out of the ponytail and shook it out, ruffling it carelessly. When she was done, she looked back up at him with large eyes, and her hair fell around her face in a flurry of untidy yellow spikes, knotting about her ears and twisting across her shoulders.

"Better?" she asked.

He couldn't help but laugh. "Now it's just a mess," he admitted sheepishly.

"Historia," Levi said. "How good of a shot are you?"

The girl's eyes flew wide. "U-uh—" She straightened up, and calmed herself with a deep breath. "Fair enough."

"Here." Levi shoved the rifle into the tiny girl's chest, and she grasped it carefully. "Take over my watch for a few minutes."

"Yes, sir," she said quietly. She glanced up at Armin, and he noticed how her eyes had become a little duller as she moved forward until she disappeared around the house.

Armin found himself slumping as he faced Levi. "She shouldn't be…" Armin trailed off at the look on Levi's face. "Is there something…" Armin stiffened uncomfortably at the man's stare. "Is there something wrong, Captain?"

"Have you told that girl anything?" Levi asked. He sounded almost impatient.

"No," Armin blurted, "of course not, why would I—?"

"I mean," Levi snapped, his eyes narrowing with such vehemence that Armin had to step back, "did you tell her that the journal is about her mother?"

Armin pressed his lips together, and he flushed as he glanced away. "No," Armin said quietly. "I was too scared to."

"That's bullshit." Levi shoved his hands in his pocket, and turned his face away from Armin. "What are you scared of? She probably won't beat you up for it."

"No, I…" Armin frowned. He didn't doubt that Historia  _could_  beat him up if she wanted to. She was clearly far stronger than him, and he didn't have a lot of height on her to have the upper hand if she did hit him. "I don't think Historia would do that. Maybe if I really, really deserved it, but…"

"So what is it, then?" Levi glanced at Armin, and his eyes were completely shadowed in the darkness. "It doesn't matter much if she knows or not."

"I  _know_ ," Armin sighed. "But I just… I don't know. There's something… bothering me about it all. I don't know…"

"Yeah, well," Levi said, turning his head up toward the bare, glinting sky. "At least the piece of shit who wrote it didn't know you."

Armin smiled wanly. "Fair enough," he said. "I'm… sorry about that."

Levi looked at him, and Armin decided from that chilly glare that he would never apologize to Captain Levi ever again, on pain of receiving that look again.

* * *

"Hey," Armin said, never looking up from the desk. Hange had come in to check on him, asking if he wanted to switch places and take a break. Armin had declined. "Hange, have you ever read  _Historiae_?"

"History what?" Hange wandered over to him, watching him curiously with glinting brown eyes. "Never heard of it."

" _Historiae_ ," Armin said, glancing at his scrap paper. He'd written down the word a few times before underlining the  _ae_  ending, and writing a footnote detailing his conclusion. The language was the same as the one used to name the Ursa Major. Armin knew that  _ursa_  was an old word for bear.  _Ursae_  was, of course, the plural of  _ursa_. So, the word  _historiae_  could only be the plural of the noun  _historia_. "Histories. By a man called Tacitus."

"Yeah," Hange said, whistling lowly. "Never heard of it, for sure. What about it, then?"

Armin had gathered a few things about  _Historiae_. For one thing, it was old. Old enough that the man could barely read the book, language had changed so much in the time between its publication and fifteen years ago. What the man had gathered, though, is that it was about a very great empire that had ruled far before the Walls had been built. Apparently the empire had been massive, and at its head was an emperor. The book itself detailed various emperors and their rules. The man listed a few, and Armin wrote down the names, but was rather clueless as to who they were. Names like Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Trajan, and Nerva were mentioned. Armin wondered if it was, perhaps, a work of fiction.

"Historia was named after it," Armin said, raising his eyes to meet Hange's. Historia had been born on the fifteenth of January. It had been snowing outside. The man had been as specific as he possibly could have been with Historia Reiss, disguising her under the symbol of snow-like ashes. Armin thought that was a rather grim way to look at the birth of a child. "The man named her that."

"The  _man_  named her?" Hange pushed up their glasses, and peered over Armin's shoulder. "That's amazing."

"How is it amazing?" Armin asked.

Hange straightened up, and glanced down at him pensively. "Well," Hange said, cupping their chin. "The fact that Historia's mother trusted the man enough to name her daughter says a lot about their relationship, don't you think?"

"Historia's mom didn't care about her, though," Armin said quietly. "So what if she just didn't care enough to name her?"

"You're the scholar here, Armin," Hange said, smiling down at him. "Is that really what you think?"

Armin didn't know. It's what he wanted to think. It would be easier than admitting that there was more to Historia Reiss's mother than he had initially perceived. It could be, perhaps, that Armin didn't want to see the woman as a person. He saw her as an idea, an unattainable dream, and that's all she could be. A cruel, senseless dream.

"I think that it's a very sad story," Armin said. He chewed thoughtfully on the end of his pen.  _History_ , Armin thought.  _And ashes_. Like corrupted snowflakes, falling from the sky. That was how the book on the outside world had described it. And that, to the man, was Historia. A baby girl, with nothing sinful about her.  _What a horrible man_ , Armin decided.

As Armin was translating, he became a little uneasy. The more the man's narration went on, the more Historia's mother seemed to reciprocate his feelings for her. Little conversations were exchanged, reassurances and soft spoken small talk. The man detailed the image of the woman's smile in words, speaking volumes of how much it meant to him. Historia had just been born, and Armin wasn't sure if he understood what was happening here. He couldn't comprehend either mindset. She had just had a baby, so it didn't make sense to Armin that she'd pursue another relationship so soon after.

He was wrong.

"Hange!" Armin snapped the journal closed, and he jumped to his feet. Hange was sitting in the chair in the corner, doing their own paperwork. They looked up at Armin curiously from behind their glasses. "I-I…"

"What?" Hange slowly lowered the paperwork to the floor, and stood up. They made the distance to Armin in three quick strides, and their brown eyes grew very wide. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Um…" Armin flushed, and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He was embarrassed at his reaction, and embarrassed that he had even stumbled across any of it. "Well… the… the man, and…"

"Yeah…?" Hange studied his face, searching it wildly. "Come on! Spit it out!"

"They… um…" Armin squeezed his eyes shut. Oh, how did he even  _say_  it? He grabbed Hange by the arm and steered them toward the chair. Hange plopped down, glancing up at Armin. "Read for yourself."

Hange chuckled, and rolled their eyes. "Well, okay," they said. "If you insist."

Five minutes later, Hange flung their head back and laughed. Armin was still flushing in the corner, looking down from embarrassment. "Please don't laugh at me," he mumbled.

"No, no," Hange gasped, twisting to face him. "I'm not laughing at  _you_. I'm laughing at how absurd this is!"

Armin couldn't help but understand. "It  _is_  a little ridiculous…" he murmured. He rubbed his bright red cheek, and sighed. "How am I supposed to tell Historia about this…"

"Maybe leave this part out," Hange said, winking. "I mean, I don't know about Historia, but I'd be a little uncomfortable hearing about who my mother, uh…  _courted_ , aside from my father."

"Courted," Armin repeated. "Good word."

"Well I didn't wanna use the word "fucked", so…" Hange said with a lopsided smirk.

Armin chewed on his tongue, and nodded slowly. "Right. Yeah." He thought about when he had found out about Levi's past, and was thankful that the man had not gone into any detail. This was entirely too uncomfortable for Armin to handle.

"They should teach a little more sex ed at training, now that I think about it," Hange hummed, closing the journal and rising to their feet.

"I don't need sex ed, Hange," Armin said calmly, looking at them sharply. "I was just surprised."

"I'm just sayin'," Hange laughed, waving their hands and shrugging. "Could use a little more."

Armin had to take a few moments to recollect himself. There was something very, very unsettling about all of this, and he couldn't explain why. He had to suppose that this was the man's big secret, which was admittedly a disappointment.  _Nothing about the Titans at all_ , Armin thought glumly, sitting back down in the chair.  _I guess I've really just been wasting my time here_. He rolled the pen around the desk thoughtfully, wondering why he couldn't just quit the process and focus on something actually important. Maybe he was too curious for his own good. No, that was it, he was  _definitely_  too curious for his own good.

In the end he ended up going back to deciphering, and he didn't regret it. The man wrote about Historia in a way that made Armin reconsider his previous notion of how the man felt about the girl. There was an excess of details of how the man doted on the baby Historia, going through great lengths to ensure the child's comfort, and reading to her to keep her from crying, and taking her whenever Historia's mother needed rest (which, according the journal, was often, because of the woman's feeble health). And then the man decided that he needed to go back to the capital to sort out his financial situation.

As in, the man needed to figure out what his job actually was.

Armin wasn't even remotely surprised, and he was actually kind of relieved. It meant that the man might actually go back to researching the Walls and the outside world, which was what he and Hange needed to get from this journal. And Armin still needed to figure out the man's name. How was he supposed to do that, anyways?

The man ended up leaving all his books on the outside world with Historia and her mother, writing that he planned to return to them. Armin wanted to know how the hell the man thought any of this would turn out okay for him. He found himself admiring his optimism, though.  _At least he really cared about Historia and her mom_ , Armin thought, watching the girl carefully one night at dinner _. So… what happened to him, then?_  Armin had a gut feeling that they would not be finding the man. It was rather sad, when he thought about it. The man really, really wanted to be there for Historia and her mother.

"Hey," he said to her, as he took the stack of dirty dishes she'd brought into the kitchen for him to clean. "Have you have heard of, um…  _Historiae_  by Tacitus?"

" _Historiae_?" Historia stood for a moment, her dull blue eyes rolling upward as her mouth parted thoughtfully. "I… think so, yes?"

He stood for a moment, his sleeves rolled up, and bubbles congealing in his hands, and he got a little too excited, and his hands flew before him, his fingers splaying fast as he began to speak. He cut himself off with a gasp as she flinched. A cloud of bubbles had bounced from Armin's hands and attached itself to her nose. "Oh," Armin uttered weakly as the girl's eyes crossed in order to see the suds sticking to her skin. He bowed his head, and reached for a rag. "Uh, oops. Sorry, lemme—"

Armin cried out in alarm as Historia took a handful of suds from the sink, and slapped them palm first onto the crown of Armin's head. His mouth dropped open in mute horror as bubbles trickled wetly down his forehead, dampening his hair.

"W-why'd you do that?" he yelped, his voice squeaky as he touched the top of his head. But, as his hands were also rather sudsy, he only made his situation worse by applying more bubbles to his already soapy hair. " _Historia_!"

She looked at him, wide eyed and alarmed. "I-I—" she gasped, taking a step back and flushing. "I thought it would be funny!"

"Well, it wasn't really—!" Armin choked, and squeezed his eyes shut as the bubbles seeped against his eyelids. "Okay, ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow,  _ow_ …."

"Did it get in your eyes?" Historia cried, her voice growing just as squeaky and horrified as Armin's. "I'm sorry, I didn't—!"

"Towel," Armin gasped, his eyes squeezed shut. "P-please…?"

"Yeah." Armin felt the vaguely damp towel press against his eyes, and he took it gratefully. "I'm so sorry, I didn't think…"

"It's fine," he mumbled, resting his back against the sink and rubbing his face with the towel. He heard a rush of shuffling feet, but he didn't dare open his eyes. They were burning too much to even entertain the thought.

"What happened?" Eren's voice drifted into the kitchen, sounding confused and vaguely defensive.

"Soap," Armin said, his voice a little strained as he pressed the towel to his eyes, not looking up.

"Did you stick your who head in the sink, Armin?" Jean asked, sounding on the verge of laughter.

"No," Historia said, her voice quiet. "I did it to him."

Armin opened his mouth to object that she had meant it playfully, but Levi's voice cracked like a whip through the room, and Armin's lips smacked shut. "What the hell are all of you doing in there?"

"Historia blinded Armin!" Jean called back.

"No she didn't!" Armin cried.

"I'll finish washing the dishes," Historia said slowly.

"No," Armin said, shaking his head. He felt bubbles graze his cheeks. "I can—"

"I said I'll do them," Historia said. Armin stood for a moment, listening to the clacking of dishes and the running of water, and Armin pressed the rag to his eyes and frowned. "I'm really sorry about getting soap in your eyes."

"I think I'll be okay," Armin said, pulling the rag away and prying his eyes open. They were still faintly burning, and his vision was blurry. He tossed the rag onto his head, and wiped away the residual suds, ruffling his hair and frowning at the floor. "Are you sure you—?"

"Yes," Historia said. She was a blurry outline of blonde hair and tiny shoulders. "I'm absolutely sure."

"Okay…" Armin moved forward awkwardly, hoping to hide how blind he truly felt. He reached forward subconsciously upon spotting the fuzzy brown silhouette that could only be Eren, and grasping his arm for a moment, blinking rapidly. Eren took Armin's arm in response, and Armin thought he could see Eren's lips pulling taut into a frown.

"Lemme help you walk—"

"No," Armin said, straightening up. "I can see now." This was true. Armin's vision was returning rapidly, though his eyes still stung quite a bit, and there was heavy unfocused tinge to the world around him. He ducked between Jean and Levi, bowing his head and throwing a glance back Historia. She was leaning over the sink, her own head bowed, and her shoulders tensed.

Armin wandered back to the study, resting his head against his hand. His hair felt sticky, soapy and slick to the point where it was beginning to harden in patches around his scalp. He sighed, running his fingers through it in hopes of remedying the discomfort. He plopped down at the desk, and flipped open both journals, setting to work on translating.

His eyes were straining to read despite his vision more or less returning to him. In the dim lamplight, Armin's eyes ached and itched, and he wrote rapidly, thoughtlessly, containing all his emotions for the sake of productivity. He wrote down the man's encounters with Levi, omitting the small, inconsequential mentions of prostitution that Armin did not find relevant to the narrative. Levi was given a book by the man on the outside world, the only one the man had brought with him.  _This book_ , the man wrote,  _is the first one I came across, and thus I revolved my memoir around it. I expect, if Levi is clever enough, he might be able to read this. I've been writing for a while, and I've learnt a lot of things. A lot, admittedly, from Levi himself. I think his little self-defense lesson might end up saving my life one day_.

Armin thought it was interesting that Levi had taught the man a little about how to defend himself. And Armin sort of wished he could catch onto something like that. But it was a silly desire, and he brushed over it quickly. He was absolutely certain the man was beginning to allude to a secret, a find within the Wall Cult, but he simply would not write it down. He called it an atrocity. And then, he lamented that he was in trouble.

He returned to Historia's home village with a heavy heart.  _At the very least_ , Armin translated,  _I can say goodbye to them_. Armin was stunned to learn that the man had been gone for a year between when he left Historia's mother and returned to her. That was a gap, for sure, and Armin now had to do the math.  _Fourteen years ago_ , he thought rapidly.  _841? Which would mean that Historia would be a year old by this point in time_.

Something occurred to Armin. He wasn't entirely certain about it, because he wasn't exactly an expert on the probability of it all, and it made him rather uncomfortable anyway. He sat back for a moment, drumming his pen against the desk. This was all getting very, very weird, and he didn't know what to do. More questions had erupted! How was that even possible? Why was the man in trouble, and what had he discovered?  _Why hadn't he written any of it down_?

"You're so stupid," Armin murmured, frowning at the journal. "You were so, so smart, but such a damn fool."

And so, upon reading what transpired next, Armin felt the urge to throw the journal across the room and exclaim, "What did you  _expect_  to happen?!"

The man had been received rather coldly by Historia's mother who, according to the man, had been holding a tiny blond child bundled in a red blanket. Armin wrote this all out with wide eyes, and a furrowed brow, trying to sort out how any of this made sense. He supposed that it was completely plausible, since Historia had only been a year old at the time, and could not have known what was going on. But  _still_.

 _I think it's best to note that I had an inkling upon looking at the child that it wasn't Historia_ , wrote the man.  _The baby was much too small, and clearly infantile. But it was a beautiful baby nonetheless, and I don't think I'll ever forget the intelligence in this child's eyes when it looked up at me. I knew it had to be mine, which confused and overwhelmed me, because I am certainly not in any state to be a father to a child at this present time, and also because I never meant for anything of this sort to happen. To reinforce this revelation, another blonde child came teetering into the room upon stubby legs, a sweet looking little girl with a bob of flaxen hair who could only be Historia. She looked at me with wonder, and I realized with a heavy heart that she, of course, did not recognize me_.

Armin chewed on his pen. His eyes were stinging terribly, and he had to blink a few times, realizing that they were rather dry, and the lantern's light was burning rather low, and his heart was thudding in his chest because he needed to tell Historia about this, and it couldn't wait, could it? Because she had a sibling out there somewhere. This man, whoever he was, dead or alive, had to be to key to some enormous secret. And by extension, so was his child.  _Where'd you go?_  Armin wondered, throwing a glance at the door. He was growing anxious, and concerned about whether or not he was translating any of this right.

 _Apologizing did nothing_ , the man had written.  _She just looked at me with that same vacant, chilly gaze that I had always found enigmatic, but now I find it sad. I was endlessly sad for her, and for these children that she bore. She told me that she wasn't angry with me, which I find difficult to believe, but rather she's simply relieved that I came back. And then she told me, allowing me the delight of holding my son, that he had been born on the third of November. "I gave him a Sina name, since you weren't here to name him after one of your damned books. I didn't think about etymology, or anything that you obsessed over with Historia," she told me. Historia stood quietly at the door, eying me with the same lethal intelligence that I had seen in my son's eyes. I thought perhaps her awe had turned to distrust upon spotting her brother in my arms. "So I named him Arm—_

The ballpoint of Armin's pen dug into the paper, creating a pooling, inky blot. He wondered if maybe his vision was still failing him. He looked at his hand, pen clutched between white knuckles, and he watched his hands tremble profusely out of shock. He felt as though his stomach had twisted it a thousand knots, and instead of delicately attempting to unravel them, the universe had taken a hatchet and buried it in his abdomen.

He shoved the journal away in a panicked, furious sort of way that suggested his confusion was melting into absolute fear. He glanced between the original journal, the old memoir of a man that Armin had never known, and a spare piece of paper, and he carefully ran through the code again in his mind, his breath catching inside his throat as he put the pen to paper and deciphered the sentence again.  _So I named him Armin_. Armin stared at his name, and wrote it again. He wrote the sentence again, referencing back to the journal and then writing it again for good measure, and then he flipped through the papers on the desk, his eyes moving rapidly as he dug through scraps and ciphers, pulling out a reference sheet he had created with Hange days and days ago, staring at it and flattening it out against the desk and pressing his hand to his lips.

He wrote it again and again and again, his pen scratching against the paper furiously, and his name glowed back at him in thickly scrawled black ink. There was no rationalizing it. There was no explaining it. There was nothing that Armin could say to make it seem plausible, or possible, and he was amazed and terrified, because this  _couldn't_  be right! He'd messed up. He'd done it wrong. He was tired, his vision was faulty, he'd done it wrong, he'd fucked up, he'd done  _something_  wrong!

He threw down his pen and flew to his feet, his chair skidding back and his palms smashing into the desk. "What the  _ **hell**_?" he cried. His scream echoed softly, ringing in the deafening silence. He couldn't think clearly. His heart was thudding heavily in his throat, and there were tears in his eyes, and he didn't know why. He was trying to deny it. He wanted to deny it. But… it was his name. His birthday. It wasn't possible, but here was his proof.

Armin took a deep breath, and then backed away from the desk. He watched the desk apprehensively, and then looked around the room. He was alone. Utterly alone, in the dark, and certainly everyone else was asleep. He stumbled on the leg of his chair, so he kicked it away angrily, wincing in pain as it connected with his shin and collapsed on its side. It made a mighty crash, and Armin stared at it, tears welling in his eyes. He took a few startled, drunken steps backwards until his back hit the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and slid downwards until his knees touched his chest, and he buried his face in them as he hugged them tightly.  _Why?_  he thought numbly.  _How? Did grandpa know? Did he lie about… about the outside world, and my parents, and everything…?_

Armin was, admittedly, in the midst of a small identity crisis.

The door flew open, but he didn't look up. He wondered if he was shaking, and he wondered if he was crying, but he was too confused to care. He was thinking of what Levi had told him about when he had looked for the man that last time.  _A father and child from Wall Maria_ , Armin thought, nausea crashing over him in a wave.  _Isn't that a little weird?_  He almost laughed. He was so, so overwhelmed that if he did laugh, he couldn't say for sure he wouldn't puke as well.

"Armin?" Hange called. Their voice was very distant, far off as though they were speaking through a glass barrier. "What the…?"

He heard the sound of a lantern swinging, and he realized it was likely too dark for them to see where he was. "Whoa!" Hange gasped. "There you are…"

"Armin…?" Eren's voice drifted into the room, and Armin jolted, his entire body reacting at the familiar sound. Footsteps fell heavily, and he wanted to shout at them all to go away, to leave him alone to try and figure things out, because that was all he could do, it was all he was good for, and he needed to figure things out for the sake of his sanity. "Holy shit! What happened, Armin, are you—?"

"What's going on?" another voice yawned. Armin vaguely recognized it as Sasha.

"Did Armin finally pass out from exhaustion?" Connie added. Armin hugged his knees tighter and frowned. "Is he okay? Jean,  _move_ , I can't see over your—"

"Armin?" Hange was very close now. He could feel the lantern's warmth as it glowed against his skin. He didn't dare look up. He didn't know if he was crying. He didn't know if he was shaking. All he knew was that it was very possible he had been lied to from a very young age. And that meant that his father was… what? What had happened to him? "Hey, c'mon, chin up. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

"What's wrong with lemon head?" Levi's voice snapped sharply. Armin curled tighter into himself. "Did you fuckin' break him, Hange?"

"Wha—?" Hange gasped, sounding offended. "Hey, I've been offering him breaks for days! He just won't let up!" Their voice switched to a sweet, almost affectionate tone. "That's a pretty admirable work ethic, if not a little dangerous, but I guess we all have our—"

"Have you checked to see if he's okay, you awful bastard?"

"Well, hold on!" Hange huffed. "Yeesh. Oi, Armin?" Armin listened to the muffled snapping of fingers near his ear. "Did you find something? C'mon, don't leave me hanging…"

"I said find out if he's okay," Levi said in a low, dangerous tone, "not find out why he's cowering in the fuckin' corner. Check your priorities, Hange."

"Hey, Armin…?" Eren sounded closer now. "What's wrong with him? Guys…?"

"It could be," Levi said, "that he got so fed up with that bullshit journal, that he completely lost his mind."

"Levi!" Hange cried. "It's completely illogical to assume that he's lost his mind at this point! We'd have to test more than just his ability to respond—"

"Armin's  _not_  crazy!" Eren cried. "Why would you even—?"

Armin felt a hand on his, and he resisted the urge to flinch. He recognized the callused touch, the familiarity of slender fingers comfortingly brushing his own. He could feel Mikasa's stare. He didn't want to look at her. He didn't know what to do. It was difficult to think, and but her touch was a warm reassurance, and he sighed. Mikasa seemed to hear him, because her fingers moved from his hand to his head.

"Armin?" she whispered, her voice firmly punching a crack in the barrier between Armin and the world around him. "Look at me."

A new voice entered the room, soft and delicate and beseeching. And it shattered the barrier in Armin's mind like a canon shell.

"What's happened?" Historia asked.

Armin's head shot up. His vision was bleary, and there was lantern light burning inside his eyes, but he felt his lips trembling, tears flooding onto his cheeks. He lurched to his feet, feeling crazed and frightened and utterly uncertain. But there was one thing he knew for sure. He couldn't let Historia know  _anything_  until he had himself put together.

"Get out," Armin said, his eyes flashing dangerously around the room. "All of you. Get out."

"Armin?" Eren looked offended, his eyes wide as Mikasa returned to his side, grasping him by the arm. Hange and Levi did not move, but rather studied Armin as though he was a curious insect that had suddenly grown wings. "What the hell…?"

"Nothing," Armin said, wiping at his cheeks with his sleeve. "I'm f-fine, okay? Just— just go. Everyone needs to go." He paused, and glanced at Hange and Levi. "Except for you two."

"Oh, good!" Hange laughed, ruffling their hair. "Because we weren't going anywhere."

"Yeah," Levi agreed dully, never looking at Armin. "Okay, everyone get your scrawny asses out."

"But—!" Eren cried as Mikasa yanked him toward the door. "Damn it— Armin, what the hell happened?"

"I…" Armin's felt his face distort in absolute regret. "I don't know… I'm sorry, Eren, I really have no idea, I just… I'm okay, really…"

"You need to eat more!" Eren cried as he was dragged through the door. From the hall he shouted, "And go the fuck to sleep!"

The rest of the squad stood awkwardly in the doorway, before they began to shuffle out as well, throwing worried glances back at Armin. Historia caught his eye, and he stared at her face, at the way her eyes were shaped, and the roundness of her cheeks, and the pallid hue of her skin. They watched each other, and then she turned away, as though it was nothing, because to her it was nothing, and she exited the room without a thought.

Armin was crying again when he slammed the door shut and whirled around, pressing his back to it. He rested his head against it, and he ran his fingers through his hair, smiling tremulously at nothing.

"I don't know," Armin said, his voice throaty and weak. "I just… I thought I knew, and I was right, but then I… I didn't know, and I don't…"

"Armin," Hange said gently. "Calm down. Why don't you start from the beginning?"

Armin looked at her, his fingers knotted in his hair and his eyes wide, and he nodded mutely. He took a deep, shuddering breath, but Levi stopped him with his hand. He walked toward the door without making a sound, and he jerked his chin at Armin to move from the door. Armin obliged, and Levi yanked open the door and snarled, "I will beat the shit out of the next person I find out here, is that clear?"

There was a chorus of, "Yessir!", and the sound of feet scurrying down the hall. Levi slammed the door shut, and turned to face Armin. His dark eyes were narrowed. "Okay," he said. "Talk."

Armin wasn't sure if he  _could_. He felt a little ashamed, and wondered if he had overreacted. Maybe this wasn't that big of a deal. Maybe… oh, who was he kidding? "Um…" He rubbed at his damp eyes with his sleeve. "I… I was deciphering, and I realized that… that I'm…" Armin shrunk under Levi's scrutiny. "Squad Leader Hange, can you just… just read it, please, I don't think I can say it…"

Hange watched him for a moment, before shrugging and walking over to the desk. "Y'know," they said, "you made an awful lot of noise."

"I was… angry," Armin said quietly, bowing his head. "Confused. I still am."

Hange picked up the journal, glancing at the desk. They peered closer at the papers resting on top of it, and Armin saw their eyebrows furrow. "Why's your name on this like, twenty times?"

"Because," Armin said, his mouth dry, "that's how many times I tried to decode a different name."

Hange and Levi stood for a few moments, their eyes moving to Armin's face. "Huh?" Hange asked.

"Just…" Armin shook his head. "Just read it."

Hange shrugged, and flipped the chair back over in order to sit down as they read. "Hm, hm, hmmm… Oh, Levi, you taught him self-defense?"

"What?" Levi looked at them sharply. "Excuse me?"

"C'mon," Hange said, frowning. "Don't you remember anything?"

"Hange," Levi said, folding his arms across his chest. " _Focus_."

"Fine, fine…" Hange rubbed their eyes tiredly beneath their glasses, and then they yawned, flipping a page. "Am I close to the part, or…?"

"You'll know," Armin said. He'd pressed his back to the door again, and was steadily slipping downwards, trying to gather his thoughts. What did he tell Historia? What did he tell anyone? Who would believe him? What if he was  _wrong_? What was he supposed to do in this sort of situation?

"Hey." Armin looked up at Levi, who had slapped his cheek gingerly. The man was standing over him as he sat on the floor, looking rather grumpy and uncomfortable. "You look yellow. Like, your face. It looks like piss. You gonna vomit?"

"No…" Armin shook his head furiously. "I don't think so…"

"Okay…" Levi looked away toward the ceiling. "Well, let me know. If you feel like you're gonna."

"Okay…"

Armin sat for a little while thinking over his predicament. This… changed a lot. Everything he had previously thought about the man who had written the journal was now warped. There was so much that Armin didn't understand, and there was so much he wished he could change. He wanted to know what the man— his  _father_ — had been thinking when he had done all those incredibly  _stupid_  things. Armin felt conflicted because he, of course, had never thought of his father as the type of person he couldn't admire. To Armin, his father had been adventurous, and had wanted to see the world beyond the Walls. But the man in the journals wasn't someone Armin admired. That man was just… just a man.

Perhaps Armin had never considered his parents to be anything more than a story made up by his grandfather. And perhaps that was why this was all so devastating.

Hange bolted upright, their eyes widening a little at the journal as they read along. Armin watched without much emotion, but rather rolled a bit of hair between his fingers, thinking about Historia's face when the bubbles had landed on her nose.  _He'd cared about her so much_ , Armin thought.  _But it didn't matter. We both still grew up alone._  Armin had to remind himself that he'd had his grandfather and Eren, while Historia hadn't had anyone.

"Oh," Hange uttered breathlessly. They raised their head, their large brown eyes meeting Armin's watery blue ones. " _Oh_ …"

"Oh?" Levi scowled. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It…" Hange licked their lips, and looked back down at the journal. "Are you… Armin, are you absolutely sure that this is—?"

"No," Armin said reluctantly. He pulled his knees to his chest, and embraced them sadly. "Or at least, I don't want it to be. But I don't know… how it  _can't_  be, I mean…"

"Someone tell me what the fuck is going on," Levi demanded.

Hange was sitting, looking rather stunned, and Armin couldn't say he could blame them. He felt that same astonishment, but now it had dulled to a drumming ache in his chest as though someone had torn his heart from his chest and now he was left with an empty cavity that bled for warmth and affection and love, for the kind of memories that only a parent could give.

"Armin is…" Hange stared at Armin, their eyes inquisitive, as though they were not sure he wanted them to go on. He could only nod slowly. "According to the journal, Historia's mother had a second child. She named him Armin."

Levi stood quietly. His eyes flashed to Armin's face, dangerous and vaguely bemused. "And you're suggesting," Levi said, "that this Armin is you?"

"It's my birthday," Armin said weakly. "It… I can't explain it, but I think… there's something about Historia that's been bothering me for a while, but I could never… never actually place what it was. But I think I know now." Armin took a deep breath, and he pushed himself shakily to his feet, raising himself above Levi. "We're a lot alike. Not just in our appearances, which are… scarily similar, now that I think about it— but our personalities too, the way she talks, and she… she fumbles over her words when she doesn't know if it's her place to speak, but when she really gets really excited about something she'll talk about it without even thinking about how much information she's memorized, and— and we both like pepper on our oranges which is really weird, but we both grew up eating oranges like that, and she memorized the names of things in  _multiple_ dead languages!" Armin was grinning now, his fingers flying through his hair as he gave a shaky, hysterical laugh. "She figured out the meaning behind the iceberg before I did— she even gave me its proper name!"

He saw Hange smile, but he could tell they both remained unconvinced. He couldn't blame them. He was having trouble believing it too. But he knew it was right. He knew it because he could feel it, and his mind was working again, and it was telling him the truth. This was the truth. Historia was his sister.  _I have a sister_ , Armin thought, feeling a little giddy.

"Levi," Armin said, looking at the man suddenly. "Remember when you told me about when you went to go look for the man?"

"You did what?" Hange asked sharply, their eyebrows flying high.

Levi ignored them. "Yes…" he said slowly, his eyes narrowing. "Why?"

"You said," Armin said desperately, "that when you went to the inn the man usually stayed at, the lady at the desk said the only person who had stayed there was…?"

Levi stared at him, his blue eyes glinting as though Armin's words had hit him. His brow furrowed slightly. "A father and child from Wall Maria," Levi responded, turning to face Hange. "How the hell is this possible?"

"Don't look at me!" Hange cried. "I'm more clueless than you are!"

"Will you quit your screeching?" Levi hissed. "At least until we figure out how to fucking deal with this."

"What do you mean?" Hange asked. "Deal with it? What's there to deal with?"

"Historia, for one," Levi said. Levi eyed Armin for a moment, and frowned. "If you were Reiss's son too, that'd make this information a hell of a lot more useful."

"I'm not," Armin said weakly. "Sorry…"

"Hey," Hange said, their eyes glittering behind their glasses. "What if Reiss knew about you, though?"

"What?" Armin asked. "What would that matter? I still wouldn't be his son."

"Yeah!" Hange nodded eagerly. "That's what I mean! What if he knew his mistress had a kid with a different man?"

Levi gave a soft scoff. "That'd piss him off," Levi said. His beady blue eyes moved to Armin's face with an almost sadistic curiosity. "What'd you say happened to your parents, Armin?"

Armin swallowed thickly, and he thought about the story he'd been told, the one he'd always believed and always clung to. Was this really any worse than his parents going outside the Walls and being eaten? Maybe this was a better fate. After all, Armin had experience with the paralyzing terror of being eaten. If he had to choose a way to die, it wouldn't be in the maw of a Titan.

"My grandfather always told me," Armin said, "that they'd gone outside the Walls."

"And you believed that," Levi stated. Armin wanted to reply affirmatively, but he could sense the solidity in Levi's voice, the strength inside the chilly monotone that allowed Armin to realize that Levi didn't want him to answer. "You were a gullible little fool."

"I always knew my parents wanted to see the outside world," Armin said, staring up at Levi with a somber expression. "I had that book, and I always wanted to… to be like them, and to see the world someday like it was in those pages. I never thought that my grandpa would lie about something like that."

"Why  _did_  he lie?" Hange wondered aloud, glancing up at the ceiling. Armin shook his head, and opened his mouth to speak, but Hange cut him off. "Oh, no, I don't expect you to know. I'm just trying to figure it out. What could be worse than knowing your parents got eaten?"

The three of them were silent for a few minutes. Armin listened to the sound of a moth's wings beating against the window, and the faint crying of crickets in the foliage outside. He closed his eyes, and thought about his grandfather's face. He realized with a sickening tremor of his heart, that he could not recall the man's features all that well. It was like a translucent veil had fluttered over his grandfather's smiling face, and his eyes and mouth and nose were mere outlines against a shimmering memory.

"Maybe 'cause it's easy to believe the worst of things," Levi said suddenly. Armin looked up at the man, who was staring up at the ceiling as well. "If you had to tell a kid a lie about what happened to his parents, tell him the worst thing that you can think of, because it's easier to believe and simple to grasp. I mean, I think it's bullshit, honestly. If it was really me, I would tell the kid the truth, but… it's possible your father's death was that kind of shady crime that no one's got any business in knowin' unless they wanna end up the same way."

"Oh," Hange said, their eyes glittering suddenly at Levi. "Oh, that might be it! In the journal, the man, he was very scared of something that had happened— the stingy bastard didn't actually write down the details, unfortunately, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that he'd get wrapped up in something he wasn't supposed to."

"He was constantly skulking around the Underground  _and_  sticking his nose in Reiss's business," Levi said, his lips pressing together thinly. "He was asking to be shot in the face."

Armin was trying to recollect his grandfather's face. The crickets served as a trigger, and Armin could smell the night air, the Shiganshina air that tasted faintly acrid— of sweat, and tobacco, and smoke billowing from an old man's pipe. And beneath him, the coarse wooden floorboards turned to concrete stone, and his body shrunk feebly, holding its defensive position of knees-to-chest and chin-to-knees, as though it would protect him from the uncertainty of the world around him. That world was an unclear haze, an illustration without form or control, merely lines dribbling down a paper, ink filling a page in haphazard attempts to create a coherent picture.

This vague memory floated in his mind, bobbing like a plank of wood down a river. If Armin so much as budged his arm, he was certain he would feel the warmth of his grandfather's body beside him. He was sure that he was on the stone step, sitting with him on a heavy summer night in Shiganshina. He was sure that he could smell the pipe as his grandfather puffed smoke pensively, raising his eyes to the stars as he told Armin that sometimes loving someone requires you to remove yourself from their life's equation.  _In a world of variables_ , he said _, a person's life can only consist of so many numbers until it's finally solved. So by loving someone, it's best to know that you will inevitably be subtracted from them in order for them to reach their ultimate fulfillment. The thing is, I can't solve your equation for you. I'm only a variable. And someday I'll be removed from your equation, and you'll be removed from mine, and maybe then I'll have some solace and be granted my own answer. But being subtracted doesn't erase a person's existence. That love is still there. You can never remove it. It's just a part of the solution._

The words billowed loftily in the air, tinged with smoke and coiling delicately inside Armin's memory. If his life was an equation, how did he account for the addition of the variable that was Historia Reiss? What sort of convoluted existence did he lead, then, with all of these constantly changing variables? The more Armin thought about it, the more his life seemed to be nothing but a series of variables entangling with and then recoiling from him.

In the tumultuous sea of memories, Armin found himself immersed in a bleary recollection of a man in a kitchen with a finger to his lips. Armin shuddered, and he hugged his knees tighter to his chest. He felt sick again, and he felt tears prickling his eyes. Whatever had happened to his father, it couldn't be good.

"Armin?"

His reverie of memories was shattered by Hange's voice. He looked up, and saw them kneeling before him, smiling weakly. He realized he felt like he was going to be sick. Genuinely, he felt the sensation of nausea as it kicked him in the stomach, and his fingernails dug senselessly at the wooden floor beneath him as he clamped his hands over his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. There were tears trickling against his nose, dribbling precariously against his fingertips.

"Hey," Hange said gently. Armin didn't want to look at them. His head was beginning to hurt. He needed to calm down. He needed the memories to stop resurfacing. He needed to breathe. "C'mon, Armin, look at me. Deep breaths, kay?"

Armin nodded mutely, and pulled his trembling hand from his mouth. He took a gulp of air, and exhaled shakily. Hange smiled, and nodded eagerly, reaching out with their callused fingers and wiping at his tears carefully. Armin was frozen, staring at them with wild eyes, and they winked.

"Cheer up," Hange chirped. "We've dealt with way weirder things than this, haven't we?"

Armin nodded. There was a lump in his throat. He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. "Y-yeah," he whispered. "Yeah. We have. I don't know why I'm so upset, I just…"

"It's okay to be upset!" Hange said, placing their hands on Armin's shoulders and squeezing them. "But you need to choose right now. Do you want to keep going with this and see it to the end? Or do you want to stop now, and forget this ever happened?"

Armin stared at them. His hands fell between his knees, and he gaped at the squad leader. "I can do that?" he whispered. "Just… quit? Like it's nothing?"

"If you're reacting like this," Levi said, studying Armin with narrowed eyes, "then I'm not going to encourage you to look into the stupid piece of shit anymore. It's caused more harm than good."

"No, you're wrong," Armin said, staring at Levi with glistening eyes. "I'm glad I found out. I just… I'm tired. I think I should go to bed."

"That's a good idea," Hange said, rising to their feet. "We all should."

"I'm going to finish deciphering the journal," Armin murmured, running his fingers through his hair. "And then… well, I don't know. I need to sort out some things out."

Hange and Levi said nothing. They only watched Armin, and for a moment, with their vacant stares, he had to wonder if either of them really cared for him at all. He left the room feeling so sick he could scream, and it was the kind of sickness that wouldn't go away even if he puked. It was the kind of sickness that came with a hollow chest where his heart should have been, the kind of sickness that started slow and then bloomed with the force of an explosion, sending scattered shell shrapnel to bury itself in his lungs.

Armin stumbled into the room he shared with Eren, Jean, and Connie, and he wandered past them as they jumped to their feet upon seeing him. He kicked off his shoes and all but fell onto his bed, burying his face in his pillow and thinking to himself,  _My mother is Historia's mother, and if my father hadn't taken me to Shiganshina, I'd have grown up with Historia, and she wouldn't have been alone_.

"Armin?" Eren's voice reached toward him, breaking through his thoughts. Armin rolled onto his side to look up at Eren. He was leaning against the upper bunk of their bunk beds, watching Armin with worry glowing in his eyes. "Are you gonna tell me what happened?"

"No," Armin said sitting up and pulling his pillow into his lap.

"Why?" Eren looked so hurt, Armin wanted to shout out everything about the journal and start crying again. "Is it something bad? Are you sick?"

Armin almost laughed. He managed a smile, and wiped at his sticky, red rimmed eyes. "No," he said with a little laugh. "No, I'm fine. It's nothing really important. I think I just need to get more sleep…"

"Well, yeah," Eren snorted. " _I_ could tell you that."

Jean and Connie were watching from the other side of the room, and Armin smiled at them weakly. "It's fine," Armin said. "Seriously, this has nothing to do with anything, it's… it's so silly, I don't even…" He sighed and tossed his pillow back down. "Yeah, forget it. Just forget the whole thing, please…"

"You're not a Titan too, are you?" Connie asked in a voice so deadpan, Armin almost took him seriously. But Armin saw a familiar glint in the boy's eyes that assured him that Connie was joking. "I don't think I'd be able to handle that one, guys. I think I'd go crazy."

"Agreed," Jean said with a smirk. "Though I'd bet you'd have a lot better control of yours than Eren does with his."

"Hey!" Eren cried. "You try doing jack  _shit_  inside a giant, living, burning sack of flesh attached to your nerves!"

"Are you agreeing that your performance as a Titan is far less than satisfactory?" Jean asked, his eyebrows rising.

"Are you  _kidding_?"

"Aw, shuddap, Jean," Connie mumbled, flopping onto his bunk. "Don't be an ass. It looks pretty painful."

Jean said nothing, but he did look at Connie, and his expression seemed remorseful. Armin took that opportunity to roll over so his back was facing Eren. He drifted to sleep so fast, no one had time to ask him any more questions.

* * *

Armin avoided Historia's eye. He avoided speaking in general, and went straight to the study after breakfast the next morning. He opened up the journals, feeling empty as he put a pen to paper and began to decipher whatever his father had done next. In truth, Armin wanted to scream. He didn't understand who these people who were likely his parents were. He wanted to cry.

Of course, there was no time for that. He'd mourned whatever lost potential his parents were the previous night. He was done with crying, and he was done with caring. Whoever his parents had been, they were gone now. And the journal was all that he had of them. The simple fact of it chilled him to the bone, but it convinced him that he needed to focus. He needed to understand why he was in the situation he was in now.

"Hey," Hange said later in the day, resting a teacup on the desk. They seemed rather tentative to approach Armin. "How's it going?"

"It's going," Armin said, never looking up from the journals. His hand was moving, cramping, from writing every word he could milk from the journal. Armin was a little dizzied at the description his father had given of his mother feeding both baby Historia and baby Armin oranges with pepper sprinkled on top.  _"I don't think that's good for them,"_  his father had pointed out. The woman had merely looked at him vacantly, and fed baby Armin another slice.

"Need any help?"

"No."

Hange watched him with a vague smile, their eyebrows knitting together as Armin looked up at them. "They're all worried, you know," Hange whispered, bending closer to him.

"They'll get over it," Armin sighed, rubbing his eyelid with an ink-stained palm. He bit his lip, and leaned back in his seat. "Is… is Historia okay?"

"She's fine." Hange studied Armin curiously. "Maybe you should talk to her yourself. She seems awful worried."

"I'll talk to her," Armin promised, closing his eyes. "I just need to finish this. I need to have at least a little bit of closure before I tell anyone."

"You can tell me," Hange said, their eyes brightening. "I mean, you can tell me how you're feeling about all of this. I'm not really the best person to spill your guts to, in all honesty, but I'm a  _far_  better alternative to Levi."

Armin paused, and when he looked up at them, he couldn't help smiling as well. "Are you sure?" he asked. "I don't want to start crying again."

"I don't mind," Hange said. "Tears are so naturally  _human_ , it's only healthy to have a good cry every now and then. C'mon, hit me. Do you feel like all this has changed anything for you?"

Armin had to sit and think that one over. "Yeah," Armin said softly. "Yeah, I think it has. I'm just… overwhelmed with all this information, because all I can think of is what could have been. And it's really, really hard to just… remember things, because the context of my entire life has changed."

"But has it really?" Hange asked. Armin stared at her quizzically. "Well, think about it. Your life's exactly the same as it was this time yesterday. Your memories haven't changed. The past hasn't changed. It's always been like this, hasn't it? You just haven't been aware until now."

Armin blinked rapidly. "Oh," he said. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

Hange beamed. "Well, now you can!" They clapped their hands together excitedly. "Now, what else are you feeling? Sad? Angry?"

"Yes," Armin answered.

"Well, which one?"

"Both!" Armin dropped his pen and shook his head furiously. "My father talked about me and Historia like we were human disasters. He said that his life was like Pompeii, and if Historia was the ashes that fell from the sky, then I was Mt. Vesuvius's volcanic eruption."

Hange stood for a moment, their brown eyes widening slightly as they smiled confusedly. "What?" they asked. "Pompeii? Mt. Vesuvius?"

"It's…" Armin ran his fingers through his hair, and shook his head again. "In my book, Pompeii was mentioned. A mountain blew up there thousands and thousands of years ago and buried the citizens under ash and fire. I think Tacitus wrote about it, because the man... my  _father_ , he wrote stuff about Tacitus getting eye-witness accounts of the volcano exploding."

"Oh." Hange straightened up in awe. "That's incredible!"

"What?"

"A mountain!" Hange's eyes glittered. "Blowing up! Could you imagine weaponizing that?"

"How do you weaponize  _nature_?" Armin asked, frowning.

"Well, we take advantage of its naturally destructive capabilities," Hange said with a bright smile. "Do you think Titans could survive extreme heat?"

"They  _are_  extreme heat, aren't they?"

"Well, I mean more extreme heat," Hange said, waving offhandedly as they looked away with rapid curiosity. "Heat so hot it sloughs the skin off the Titan's bones!"

"Wouldn't it just regrow?" Armin asked.

"I don't know," Hange said. "Oh! What about extreme cold? What if we  _froze_  a titan?"

"That sounds terrifying," Armin admitted. "Is that possible?"

"I don't know that either," Hange said. "I'm just throwing things out there. Oh, what were you saying? About the exploding mountain?"

"Well apparently," Armin said bitterly, "I'm it."

Hange smiled in sympathy. "It's not a bad thing to be compared to, though," Hange offered.

"I was only a few months old," Armin said. "I don't think I can take it as a compliment."

"Just keep an open mind," Hange said. Armin frowned down at his hands. "And also, we'll be doing the experiments in a few days. Just a heads up."

"I'll be done by tonight," Armin said, picking up his pen and pulling his tea closer to him. "Don't worry."

Hange nodded, and watched him for a few moments longer before exiting the room. Armin was left to the last of the journal, which was terrifying and exhilarating to him. The man— his father, Armin reminded himself— had offered Historia's mother—  _his_ mother— a chance to leave the ranch she lived on. Armin played with this thought. He imagined a childhood where he had two parents and a sister. He imagined a life that could never have been.

" _Did I ever say I wanted a new life?"_  asked Armin's mother. There was something about these words that hurt Armin. Because this was her response to having a life with him. This was his mother's perspective. She hadn't wanted to be his mother. She hadn't wanted anything to do with him.

And in response, Armin's father had apologized in shock. And then, with the furious revelation that his mother was  _glad_  to be rid of Armin, the man offered to take Historia as well. Armin knew the outcome, and yet he begged and pleaded with the universe to allow his elder sister just a little love, and let her have really been his sister.

Armin was bitterly disappointed when his mother declined.  _Maybe she loved Historia more_ , Armin thought. He felt a pang of jealousy. It was an awful feeling, knowing fully well that he had no right to envy, and yet here he was almost painfully aching to know what life might have been like if their places had been switched, and Armin had grown up on that small northern ranch while Historia witnessed the destruction of Shiganshina.

" _It's cruel, you know,"_  said Armin's father to his mother.  _"Separating them is the worst thing to do."_

And yet, they did it. Armin's father didn't think to leave Armin with his mother. Armin wondered what that would have been like as well. He was a little relieved when he recalled that Eren would not be such a huge factor in Armin's life if his father had not taken him from his mother at such a young age.  _I didn't even know her_ , Armin thought glumly.  _I doubt she'd want to know me even if I did_.

According to the journal, Armin had wailed upon departure. And Historia had begun to wail too. Armin tried to imagine having that sort of connection to the tiny blonde girl, but he was saddened to find that he couldn't empathize. And with a heaviness in his heart, he closed the journals. Levi had stolen it in the midst of his father's writing. He had written about the difficulties of traveling with a baby, and the uncertainty of being a father.

Armin laid his head down on the desk, shadows filling the room. There were no explanations. There was no closure.

There was only the rapid addition of new variables to his equation.

* * *

Armin rolled an orange between his palms, a sack of pepper dangling from his wrist and two journals weighing heavily in his pocket as he stood outside the girls' door. Levi and Hange had gotten rid of the others for the afternoon, and that meant that it was now or never. He stood nervously, his fingernails burrowing into the outer skin of the orange. No, nervous didn't begin to cut it. Armin was feeling intense anxiety at the thought of revealing it all to Historia, but it couldn't be helped. He couldn't not tell her, no matter how tantalizing the idea was. It would eat him alive, and gnaw at the empty space in his chest until blood began to seep from every orifice of his scrawny body.

He knocked on the door fast. The sound was terrifying, an echo of his thundering heartbeat, and he took a deep breath to remind himself to stay calm. It couldn't be that bad. And whatever the result of this was, he would live through it. So he smiled when the tiny blonde girl opened the door, and looked up at him confusedly. The way her hair fell disheveled across her shoulders, Armin could tell she had been sleeping.

"Armin?" Historia asked groggily, her eyes darting to the orange in his hands. She frowned. "Is… is something wrong?"

"No," Armin said, eyes darting away from Historia's face in order to avoid noting the similarity of it to his own. "Well… not… entirely." He took a deep breath, and looked back at her with a furrowed brow. "Can I come in?"

She studied him for a moments, before nodding, opening the door a little wider to allow him to pass through. He did, and stood for a moment with his eyes closed, trying to remember exactly how he'd planned to break this news to Historia. Planning for this sort of situation was difficult.

"Are you okay, Armin?" Historia asked tentatively. When he opened his eyes, she was tilting her head at him.

He smiled at her, and shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. He glanced at the bunk beds, and he wandered over to the only one that wasn't made, assuming that it was Historia's. He sat down, and he began to peel the orange carefully, watching with a sad gaze as his fingers shook. Historia wandered before him, standing over him so her shadow enveloped him.

"Maybe we should get a doctor…" Historia said slowly.

"I'm not sick," Armin said, staring at the orange peels he was tearing from the fruit. He set them in his lap, and continued to dig his nails under the skin of the orange and rip. "I'm just… trying to figure things out."

"Well," Historia said, blinking down at him, "you're very good at that, aren't you?"

"Sure," Armin said with a sharp laugh. "Yeah, I'm great at figuring things out. And once I do, then what? It's easy to get information, Historia, but it's hard to know how to use it."

"I'm… I'm sorry?" Historia took a step back in surprise. "Should I get Eren? Or… or the Squad Leader and Captain?"

"I'm not going to freak out like I did a few days ago," Armin said, resting the last of the orange peels in his lap. He looked up at her, and smiled. "I promise."

She frowned, and then nodded slowly. "Okay…" She looked out the window, and then down at him suddenly. "Are we the only ones in the house?"

"Captain Levi is on the porch," Armin said. "He knows I'm in here."

She looked suddenly very apprehensive. And then she spotted the journals sticking out of Armin's pocket. "Is this about those?" she asked, her finger extending toward Armin's side. She eyes were narrowed, and her brow was furrowed. "You said I didn't have anything to do with it."

"Not at first," Armin said quietly. He bowed his head. "I'm sorry. I was going to tell you earlier, but the more I read, the more I had no idea how to actually explain it to you."

"Well," Historia said with wide eyes, "you could let me read it!"

"You definitely can," Armin said. "If you want to. But first, I need to tell you something."

Historia stood quietly, her eyes searching her face. She looked down at the orange in his hand, and the closed her eyes. "Should I sit down?" she asked softly.

"Yeah…" He split the orange in half as she cautiously sat down on the bed beside him, her hands folding in her lap. He offered her half the orange, and she took it gratefully, the corners of her lips turning upward as they both took a pinch of pepper and sprinkled it across their respective halves.

"Is it about my father?" Historia asked, nibbling at an orange slice.

"Um," Armin said, mirroring her, "actually, no."

She stared at him confusedly, and swallowed. "Wait," she said, turning to look at him. "What?"

"It's about your mother," Armin said carefully. Her eyes widened quite a bit, and she leaned away from Armin with her mouth parting slightly in a gape. "And the man who wrote this journal."

"The Wall Cultist…?"

"He's not a Wall Cultist," Armin sighed, pulling at another orange slice. He began to suck on it to give himself time to gather his thoughts. Historia stayed quiet, and Armin listened to the quiet sound of chewing. "He was… strange. I don't know. He didn't end up talking about his work very much, and that's kind of screwed us over a little, because I think he found something really important."  _I think he died for it_ , Armin wanted to say.

"How did he know my mother?" Historia asked slowly. She peered up at Armin with dull eyes, as if she didn't truly care.

"He met her at your father's house," Armin said, staring at the dark freckles of pepper dotting the ridges of his orange slice. "She was sick, so he helped her. She was pregnant with you at the time."

"Oh," Historia said. Her expression didn't change from the dull, disinterested look she had upon asking about her mother. "That's a little… strange to think about."

"It gets weirder," Armin said. He took a deep breath, and twisted his body to face Historia, his eyes growing wide and fearful. "Listen, I'm going to tell you something really, really strange and kind of amazing and scary, but also incredibly unbelievable, so I need you to keep an open mind for me and just… just listen, and let me explain, and try to believe me because I really think it's true."

Historia's eyes had flown wide, and Armin could see himself inside the glittering blue depths of them.  _I met a woman with eyes like the ocean_ , Armin recalled.  _Those are Historia's eyes. And mine too_. "O-okay," Historia said uncertainly. "I'll believe you."

"Wait," Armin said, jerking back for a startled moment. "What? You'll believe anything I say?"

"Yes…?" Historia blinked at him, and her eyebrows furrowed. "Armin, the person I care about the most in the whole world turned out to be a Titan, and I don't love her any less for that. I think I can handle whatever you have to say."

"But you'll believe me?" Armin asked, his empty hands feeling sticky from the orange he had just eaten. "No matter what I say?"

"You're never wrong," Historia said carefully, frowning at her last orange slice. "I think I trust anything that you say is true."

Armin felt a rush of warm affection for Historia, whose faith in him reminded him of Eren and Mikasa's trust in his judgment. And he was amazed by it. "Thank you," Armin said, blinking wildly. "It… it means a lot that you trust me."

Historia smiled weakly, and chewed on the outer skin of her final slice of peppered orange. Armin bowed his head for a few moments to try and gather his words. He had a little more confidence now that she had told him that she trusted him, and he was a little dizzy with the constant thought that he was  _sitting beside his sister_. It was like he'd stepped into a dream.

"The man in the journal," Armin started very slowly, "fell in love with your mother." Armin watched Historia's face, but she merely stared at him with furrowing eyebrows, and continued to chew on the edge of her orange. "He helped her a lot when she was pregnant with you. He wrote a lot down. She even brought him to your ranch when she went home to have you." Armin's face was growing warm as Historia watched him attentively, her brow continuing to furrow. "When you were born, he was the one who named you. After  _Historiae_  by Tacitus."

"Oh," Historia said, her shoulders squaring in alarm. "I… I had the book, but I never thought…"

"He cared about you," Armin told her, searching her face and smiling. "I mean, I think it took him a little while to warm up to the idea of you, but he really did care about you. He read stories to you, and played with you, and took care of you when your mother wasn't up to it…"

Historia swallowed her orange slice, and tilted chin toward the ceiling. "Sounds about right," she said softly. She shook her head, and closed her eyes. "I don't remember any man in the house like that when I was younger."

"You were only a few months old," Armin said. "So you wouldn't."

"I guess that makes sense." She looked up at Armin, and he saw the corner of her lip twitch. "I'm assuming that… isn't all you wanted to tell me?"

"You assumed right." Armin laughed nervously, and he pulled the translation journal out of his pocket. He held it up to her. "This is the notebook we used to decipher the man's writing. It's what I've been working on for over a week."

"Do you want me to read it… or…?" Historia eyed the journal uncertainly.

"You can if you want," Armin said. "You have every right to."

"I guess…"

Armin flipped open the journal, and began to thumb through the pages slowly. "I can't explain your mother's relationship with this man," Armin said quietly. "I wish I could, I wish I— I wish I knew more about what happened, because it'd be easier to think clearly about it. I don't know if she cared about him, truly, I really don't, and it's scary. But whatever happened between them…" Armin continued to flip carefully through the pages, sweat breaking out across the back of his neck from anxiety. "He left for about a year. When he came back, there were two children on your ranch."

He paused to allow this information to sink in. Historia did not move, nor did her eyes leave Armin's face, nor did her expression change. She simply sat in silence, as thought the information had not fully hit her.

"What?" she asked flatly.

"She had another child," Armin said, his voice strained. "With the man who wrote this… this  _stupid_ fucking journal…"

"My mother," Historia said softly. Armin looked at her face, and saw there truly was no change in it. She simply stared at Armin.

"Yes," Armin said. He took a deep breath, and he closed his eyes. "He was born on November third."

"840?"

"Yeah."

Historia sat for a moment, and she eyed the journal with a passive expression. For a moment, as Armin observed her expression, her pale hair falling into her eyes, he thought she looked a bit like Annie. They were both very quiet, and Armin waited. He wondered how much Historia really knew about him. How much she truly cared.

"Armin," she said quietly, "isn't that your birthday?"

Armin opened his mouth to reply affirmatively, but his voice caught in his throat. He snapped his mouth shut in terror of how his voice would sound, and he wondered if he'd begin to cry again out of helpless confusion. So instead of replying, Armin thrust the journal in her hands, and he pointed to the page in which he had scribbled out his own name until the ink bled through to the next page. The spot was marked with a furious black blot.

Historia bowed her head, her hair framing her pale cheeks as she read the page rapidly. Armin didn't realize he was holding his breath until she sat back with her body growing rigid. She stared ahead of her for a moment, her eyes unfocused and dull, and she handed the journal back to Armin.

"Oh," she said.

Armin felt his heart return to him with the force of a Titan's fist. It stuttered viciously in his chest. Hammering at his ribs and screaming in his ears, thudding heavily and horribly, hissing at him to scream and cry and shake Historia until she emoted what she was really feeling.

"Oh," Armin repeated in a wane, strangled voice. "Um… yeah…"

Historia folded her hands in her lap. Armin closed the journal with wide eyes, feeling dazed and sickened. His chest hurt, as though he'd gone running for too long and now his heart was thundering, and there was a sensation of stones pressing upon his chest, weighing him down and threatening to cave in his ribcage. He couldn't look at Historia's face anymore.

"Well…" Historia was just as careful as Armin to avoid looking anywhere but forward. "That is… something."

"Yeah…" He squeezed his eyes shut, and he could feel his fingers trembling. "You believe me?"

"I told you I would," Historia said. Her voice was oddly level, and soft, and so amazingly dull that Armin wanted to flop back against the bed and stare at the bunk above them for hours and hours and hours. "But… I… don't know. What does it matter?"

"What?" Armin asked, looking down at her in surprise.

Historia matched his gaze with her vacantly passive one. "What does it matter?" she repeated. "It's not like it changes anything."

"Oh." Armin swallowed hard, and he nodded furiously. "Yeah, I know, I just… you… needed to know."

"Yeah…" Historia averted her gaze. "I guess so. Thank you."

"Um," Armin muttered, gathering up the orange peels hurriedly, and rising to his feet. "Yeah. No problem."

He stood for a moment, and he couldn't will himself to look down at her, even though he could feel her dull gaze on his back. He felt… so nauseatingly empty so very suddenly, and it made his eyes prickle viciously from unadulterated numbness that prickled through his body and stung the shreds of the heart that had blown open against his lungs.

"Bye, then," Armin murmured.

"Bye…" Historia said quietly.

Armin moved swiftly from the room, and closed the door almost frantically, his back slamming against the door as he made some rapid attempt to catch his breath, catch his rattled mind, catch his battered heart as it floated in pieces around the empty cavity of his chest.

 _Just another variable_ , Armin thought numbly, pushing off from the door and walking with his head held high down the hallway.  _Or maybe she was never a variable at all_.

Armin rubbed his eyes furiously for a moment or so, before he accepted that he could be a variable in Historia Reiss's equation without her being one in his.


End file.
